FAIRHOPE – A state Certificate of Needs board is set to decide this summer whether a new surgical center will be built on the Eastern Shore.
On May 7, Alabama Administrative Law Judge James F. Hampton recommended that the board deny USA Health the certificate to build an ambulatory surgical center on a site at the intersection of Alabama 104 and Alabama 181.
Hampton’s recommendation will be presented to the state Certificate of Need Board, which is scheduled to rule on the request this summer.
After an initial hearing before his decision, Hampton said in his recommendation that the center would be good for the area’s economy and healthcare. He said, however, that USA Health had not met the legal requirements needed for the certificate of need.
“A new ASC at the Mapp location would be popular, economically advantageous, improve competition and provide convenient care to many patients inside and outside of Baldwin County. However, such a conclusion is only tangentially related to need as addressed in the law and rules,” Hampton said in his ruling.
He said USA Health had not met the criteria for establishing “need” as required by the law and that he had to recommend that the certificate be denied.
The ambulatory surgical center would be a 25,000-square-foot facility that provided outpatient surgery.
Infirmary Health, which operates Thomas Hospital in Fairhope and several other medical facilities in Baldwin County, opposed the USA Health application to build the center.
After the recommendation, Mark Nix, president and CEO of Infirmary Health, issued a statement praising the decision.
“Thomas Hospital appreciates the administrative law judge’s recognition that there are already more than sufficient outpatient surgery centers available within a short distance of the proposed new facility,” Nix said in a statement issued Wednesday, May 12. “Thomas Hospital, a leading hospital in southwest Alabama and an integral part of Infirmary Health, will continue to meet the healthcare needs of Baldwin County as it has done for the past 60 years. Baldwin County, although growing, is adequately served by three existing surgery centers in addition to the outpatient surgery department at Thomas Hospital.”
The facility is being built on land donated to USA Health by Louis and Melinda Mapp of Fairhope.
The Mapps issued a statement after the ruling saying they were disappointed in the recommendation to deny the certificate.
“We were disappointed in the judges’ recommendation to deny the CON Application of USA Health in Baldwin County. We were also surprised by the objection to this CON application by the dominant healthcare provider in Baldwin County. We are great believers in the free enterprise system where citizens have the right to choose,” the statement said.
Gary Mans, associate vice president of marketing and communications at USA Health, said that if the board follows Hampton’s recommendation, residents will not have access to services that the center plans to offer, such as specialty and pediatric procedures and surgery that are not available in Baldwin County.
“This is particularly important to Baldwin County’s pediatric patients and their families as well as those that are currently paying too much for services which could be done in the proposed state of the art academic ambulatory surgical center in Baldwin County. Without this project, Baldwin County patients will pay higher co-payments and deductibles for ambulatory care procedures in Baldwin County,” Mans said.
He said Baldwin County is the fastest growing county in Alabama and the demand for medical services is increasing.
“We do not understand the failure to address this important fact or to stipulate that there is plenty of medical capacity to meet the overwhelming growth in Baldwin County,” Mans said.
USA Health also plans to build a 50,000-square foot professional office building on the site. That three-story structure will not be affected by the ruling on the surgery center, Owen Bailey, USA Health CEO, said in a discussion with the Fairhope City Council before the ruling.
The office building will provide space for doctors and other medical-care providers. The facility will include primary care, family medicine and a full range of diagnostic and imaging services on the ground floor, Bailey said
USA Health plans to break ground on the office building in the late summer or early fall of 2021, he said.
