Novant accepts state's conditions on proposed Clemmons Medical Center

By: Richard Craver | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: January 12, 2009

Novant Health Inc. said today that it has accepted the 14 conditions placed by state regulators on its proposed Clemmons Medical Center.

The decision throws a new wrinkle into the heated public-relations fight between Novant and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center over their attempts to build competing community hospitals about four miles apart.

On Dec. 23, Novant received conditional approval of its 50-bed hospital in Clemmons from the N.C. Division of Health Service Regulation.

The two main concessions Novant agreed to were having no gastrointestinal endoscopy room and no new CT scanner at the proposed Clemmons center.

With Novant agreeing to the regulators' conditions, it appears the only obstacle left to building a hospital in Clemmons would be an appeal of the agency's decision by Baptist.

That would be a role reversal of sorts for the health-care systems.

Baptist officials have been outspoken since September — in statements and full-page advertisements — that Novant is playing a spoiler's role by appealing the state's conditional approval of Baptist's 48-bed replacement hospital for Davie County in Advance. The state granted the conditional approval of Baptist's proposed hospital last Aug. 28.

Appeals could delay the start of construction on either hospital by at least a year.

Unlike Novant, Baptist has appealed some of the conditions imposed by the state on its proposed hospital in Davie County. Health-care systems have to either accept the state's conditions on their proposed hospital to obtain the certificate of need or win an appeal of the changes they want.

Baptist has not yet taken action to appeal the state's conditional approval of Novant's hospital in Clemmons, spokeswoman Jonnie Rohrer said today.

"We have a few more weeks before they need to make the decision to appeal or not," she said.

The debate over whether the communities can support two hospitals began in September 2007, when Forsyth and Baptist began pursuit of a certificate of need from the state - the step required to open a hospital.