The two companies that want to build new hospitals in the region agree on the need for more hospital beds but differ on how to provide them.
MediCorp Health System and HCA Health Services of Virginia Inc. filed applications with the state Health Department yesterday, offering new details about the hospitals they hope to build in Stafford and Spotsylvania counties.
Both companies seek to serve one of the fastest-growing regions in the state and the second and third fastest-growing counties. And both believe that the area will need additional hospital beds by the time they could open a new hospital in 2009.
Currently, Mary Washington Hospital, the only hospital in the region, has 412 beds. Three-fourths of those beds, on average, were in use during the first 10 months of 2005, according to the MediCorp application.
HCA also argues that the region is the one of four planning districts in Virginia with only one hospital, and by far the most populous of the four.
"The Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center will introduce choice and competition to Planning District 16," says HCA's application.
Both companies cite traffic congestion as one of the justifications for their hospitals.
Spotsylvania residents are "increasingly frustrated" with access to Mary Washington Hospital, says HCA's application.
"Access to MWH from Stafford County is grossly impaired by traffic congestion, which will worsen in the coming years," according to MediCorp's application. About one-fourth of the patients at Mary Washington live in Stafford.
HCA proposes to relieve this congestion with construction of a hospital on 75 acres near the intersection of U.S. 17 and Interstate 95 in the Massaponax area of Spotsylvania County.
HCA's application anticipates an eventual extension of the Spotsylvania Parkway, across I-95, to its proposed location. Currently, the parkway ends at U.S. 1.
MediCorp has named its hospital the Stafford Hospital Center. It wants to build on a 34-acre parcel on U.S. 1, a quarter-mile south of the Stafford courthouse. The site would be accessible from Courthouse Road.
Both companies propose full-service hospitals, including inpatient beds, an intensive care unit, neonatal services, an emergency department, diagnostic imaging, inpatient and outpatient surgery and radiation therapy.
HCA took advantage of a rule in the review process that allows applicants to submit a skeletal application. They then must supply additional information in the following weeks, during what the state calls "completeness review."
HCA's application does not specify what its hospital will cost, how many people will work there, how big it will be, how many beds it will have, or how those beds will be apportioned.
HCA officials have said that they expect their Spotsylvania hospital to have about 130 beds. Mark A. Foust, vice president for marketing for the Central Atlantic Region, said yesterday that that is now the upper limit.
"It might be fewer than that," Foust said.
MediCorp says that the Stafford Hospital Center will be a four-story building of about 250,000 square feet. The hospital will have 100 beds, including 84 general-use beds, 10 obstetrical beds and six intensive-care beds.
MediCorp expects to employ 320 people, including 66 nurses, at the new hospital.
It says the project will cost $158 million, not counting the cost of financing. It will borrow 79 percent of the cost and use its reserve for the remainder.
The two companies are competitors under the Virginia Department of Health's "certificate of public need" process. The state requires a permit for major healthcare expenditures as a way of controlling costs.
HCA, based in Nashville, is one of the nation's largest hospital companies. It is a for-profit corporation with 17 hospitals and surgery centers in Virginia.
MediCorp is a nonprofit corporation and the parent company of more than two dozen local healthcare services. Mary Washington has been the sole hospital in the region for more than 100 years.
The state review includes public hearings that are expected to begin in March. The state health commissioner will make the final decision sometime in late summer.
To reach JIM HALL:
Email: jhall@freelancestar.com