Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 13, 1995 TAG: 9507130044
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY AND PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Long
Lester Lamb, Radford Community's president and chief executive officer, blasted Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. and one of its executives for statements about the competition to build a new hospital in the Radford area.
Radford Community, part of the nonprofit Carilion Health System, is seeking state approval to build a 97-bed hospital at Interstate 81 and Virginia 177 in Montgomery County. It wants the new, $61.7 million facility to replace its aging building in central Radford.
Pulaski Community and Montgomery Regional hospitals, part of Columbia/HCA, the largest for-profit hospital chain in the country, filed a competing application two weeks ago to build a $26 million, 50-bed hospital in Radford.
A victory for one or neither of the hospitals is a year or more off, and will follow several levels of regulatory review, a public hearing and a decision by the state health commissioner.
Speaking before more than 75 local officials, hospital supporters and at least one Columbia/HCA official, Lamb hit his competitors on a variety of fronts Wednesday, including:
Charging that Montgomery and Pulaski were seeking to create a health care monopoly in the New River Valley.
Disputing that there have ever been offers by Pulaski and Montgomery to buy Radford Community, as Pulaski Community Administrator Chris Dux said last week.
Insisting that Radford Community had no plans to close, even if the state granted the Pulaski-Montgomery application.
Questioning whether Columbia/HCA will ever build a new hospital if it does win permission to do so.
Noting that Columbia/HCA's Radford proposal excludes obstetrics services, so a pregnant Radford patient might have to travel to Blacksburg or Pulaski to seek treatment.
Questioning why, if Columbia/HCA says Radford Community could close and people would not be inconvenienced, it still wants to buy the current building.
Lamb, who also unveiled architectural renderings of the Radford Community proposal, said the hospital can afford to construct the new building even in a time of a major shakeup in the health care industry and Carilion itself.
Dux, the Pulaski administrator, was out of the area Wednesday and could not be reached for comment. But last week Dux said the question of a monopoly would have to be determined by the U.S. Justice Department. He said he saw no difference between three out of four hospitals in the New River Valley being owned by Columbia/HCA and three out of four in the Roanoke Valley being owned by Carilion.
Carilion owns Giles Memorial Hospital in the New River Valley, while Columbia/HCA owns Lewis-Gale in Roanoke.
"It depends on how you define the marketplace," Kevin Meyer, marketing director at Pulaski Community, said Wednesday. It could include Twin County Community, an independently owned hospital at Galax, and Wythe County Community at Wytheville, which has a management services contract with Carilion.
Meyer said the talks over buying Radford Community had been between Pulaski Community's former corporate owner and Carilion.
"There's a good possibility [Lamb] didn't know about it because the talks were very short and very limited," Meyer said. "I'll give them that."
He said the talks had been in Roanoke, and it quickly became clear that Carilion was not interested in selling.
Archie Cromer, chairman of the Carilion Health System board, said Radford Community's proposed replacement could reduce expenses by $1.5 million a year.
He compared the old hospital to airplanes designed more than 50 years ago, noting that the more advanced aircraft now carry more people greater distances more economically. "It's the same idea," he said. "And that's why we want it so bad."
Cromer said Radford Community already has saved $40 million toward the projected $61.7 million cost of the new facility, over the 15 years that it has been planned. That leaves $20 million that would have to be borrowed.
Cromer also challenged Dux's claim that Radford Community would have to raise its charges to patients to pay for the project. He said the hospital's own projections show that "we will not increase costs at all, and our competitors will have to."
Lamb predicted that the location of the new hospital building two miles outside Radford in the so-called gateway area of Montgomery County would benefit both the city and the county by opening that corridor to commercial development, because utilities would be extended to the hospital site.
Dux, speaking to a gathering in the same room Friday at the Radford Best Western, called predictions of such development a "Field of Dreams" scenario, quoting the line from that movie: "Build it and they will come." He said that has not proved to be the case in places where other hospitals have been built.
by CNB