RALEIGH — Eastern North Carolina leaders who wrapped up a 130-mile walk to Raleigh to fight for re-opening a closed rural hospital got support Wednesday from a Senate panel to avoid an extensive regulatory process to unshutter its doors.
The Senate Rules Committee voted for amended House legislation aimed at exempting the Belhaven hospital from certificate-of-need rules and for deeming the building an “existing hospital” for state licensing purposes.
“This bill will reduce the overly burdensome regulation required of financially challenged rural hospitals,” said Sen. Bill Cook, R-Beaufort, who pushed for the change, which “will allow small rural hospitals to more easily change management with less disruptions of health care to their communities.”
Health care company Vidant Health took over the Pungo Hospital in 2011 but closed it on July 1, 2014, in part due to operating losses and the hospital’s aging building.
Vidant is now building an around-the-clock health facility, but it’s not considered a hospital, which Belhaven Mayor Adam O’Neal and others say is needed for critical, emergency care now lacking between Beaufort County and the Outer Banks.
A nonprofit formed to reopen the hospital has been approved for a $6 million federal rural development loan provided in part there is a certificate of need — a state document affirming the hospital’s necessity. The document wouldn’t be necessary for an “existing hospital.”
The certificate of need “is holding us up and stopping us from saving lives,” O’Neal told the committee, adding “the bureaucrats in Raleigh are stopping us from opening our hospital up and it’s wrong and we need some help.”
O’Neal said in an interview hospital supporters believe they don’t need a new certificate of need because the hospital had previously been open for more than 60 years. The process would take a year and cost $500,000, and likely would be opposed by Vidant, the mayor said.
Vidant spokeswoman Chris Mackey has said the company is not opposing a certificate of need for Belhaven and supports the current certificate laws in place.
O’Neal and Beaufort County Commissioner Hood Richardson addressed the committee at the close of a march from Belhaven to Raleigh that began Sept. 8 to draw attention to the hospital’s plight. O’Neal already has walked twice to Washington, D.C., since the closing for the same purpose.
The bill’s next stop is the Senate floor on Thursday. The House would have to agree to the changes.
O’Neal said he met Wednesday with Gov. Pat McCrory and new Health and Human Services Secretary Rick Brajer about the situation, and separately with House Speaker Tim Moore. McCrory’s office didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The nonprofit group seeking to revive the hospital is led by O’Neal as its non-paid chairman.
The proposed exemption, incorporated into another health bill, seemed unlikely last week. Sen. Tom Apodaca, R-Henderson, said then that senators would be unlikely to support a carve-out to help Belhaven, saying it would set “a dangerous precedent.” While Wednesday’s bill aids Pungo Hospital, the language could apply to other recently closed North Carolina hospitals.
Apodaca, who chairs the Rules Committee, said the Senate Republican Caucus “decided it needed to be heard. So that’s why we’re hearing it.”
Mackey said the company believes the new 12,000-square-foot facility it hopes to open next summer “is the best path forward.” The facility will include a helicopter pad to rush critical patients to other hospitals.
“Continuing to operate an out-of-date facility under a traditional inpatient model of care is not a sustainable model of health care for Belhaven and the broader community,” Mackey said.
