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| Melody Jameson Photo
Dedicated to keeping HCA’s South Bay Hospital in its present location on S. R. 674, campaign volunteers Linda Hansen (center) and Fern Frederick (right) assist Irv Rothman, a retired nursing home administrator, with a letter to Governor Charlie Crist stating the community’s case for keeping the facility in place.
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SUN CITY CENTER - Backed by the recommendation of an administrative law judge in Tallahassee, this community’s determination to retain a full service hospital in its midst is bearing down on multiple fronts – from county commissioners to the state’s governor.
And support of their position is gaining ground among area decision makers.
A “Declaration of Support” for the community’s vigorously-voiced desire to keep HCA’s South Bay Hospital on S.R. 674 was expected to come out of a meeting of Hillsborough’s Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) Tuesday, Ed Barnes, co-chairman of the South County Health Care Committee, told The Observer at deadline this week. Barnes also is a SCC resident and a SCC Community Association director.
One of those commissioners on Monday, prior to the scheduled BOCC Tuesday session, was making her support crystal clear. Rose Ferlita, whose District 1 includes the Gibsonton, Apollo Beach and Ruskin areas of the South County, sent a letter to Holly Benson, secretary of the state’s Agency on Health Care Administration (AHCA).
Noting she is a pharmacist and therefore also a health care professional, Ferlita asks Benson to support the petition of St. Joseph’s Hospital to build a new 90-bed facility on Big Bend Road over the HCA/South Bay proposal to relocate its existing installation on S.R. 674 to a site in the same Big Bend area.
The commissioner stated in her letter that “While we can build a library, a community college and a county services center, we need you to recognize the need for an additional hospital to serve our citizens.” Ferlita also noted the desirability of competition in the South County health care market with addition of a hospital operated by a different and not-for-profit ownership. Both the Sun City Center area hospital and the Brandon Regional Hospital are HCA properties.
Ferlita’s office said on Monday that the matter of commission support for the SCC position was on the Tuesday agenda, initiated by Commissioner Brian Blair, and that Ferlita planned to support such a BOCC declaration.
In the office of the other South County commissioner, Al Higginbotham, his aides confirmed Monday that the matter was on their Tuesday agenda but could not predict the commissioner’s position on it. Higginbotham’s District 4 includes the remainder of the South County.
As the health care committee anticipated the commissioners’ formal support, it also was setting up a local public session with state legislators.
Sen. Ronda Storms and possibly Rep. Ron Reagan are expected to join Sen. Victor Crist in a town hall meeting slated for 10 AM Thursday (June 26) at Community Hall on South Pebble Beach Blvd., Barnes said. Storms and Reagan represent the SCC area in the Florida Senate and House of Representatives respectively; Crist represents a North Tampa district. All three reportedly support maintaining a full service hospital close to SCC.
With clear lines of communication opened to county officials and state representatives, the health care committee simultaneously is keeping up its letter-writing campaign aimed at both the office of Gov. Charlie Crist and the offices of AHCA, Barnes said.
Volunteers are staffing a station in The Atrium on the North Community Center campus from 9 AM to 1 PM Monday through Friday, assisting residents with their letters to the state leaders, Barnes said. Residents can sign one of 27 letters addressed to the agency or one of 12 addressing the governor or compose their own letter, he added.
Some of the written communications ask, in part, for review of the December, 2007, decision by AHCA which denied approval of St. Joseph’s plan and approved the HCA/South Bay proposal to relocate most of its acute care services to its Big Bend property, leaving only emergency and limited diagnostic services at the present site. Some of the letters suggest the decision was based on inaccurate information; others point to a “patient occupancy imbalance and marginal competition.”
The multi-pronged effort by community leaders to retain South Bay Hospital in its current location stems from endeavors by both hospital networks – the for-profit Hospital Corporation of America, South Bay’s parent corporation based in Nashville, TN, and the not-for-profit St. Joseph’s HealthCare, based in Tampa - to gain state approval for new facilities on their Big Bend acreages. Both originally sought new full-service hospital approvals in 2005 and, ultimately, both were denied by AHCA based on its perceived lack of need for additional hospital beds in the area.
While HCA/South Bay then altered its plans to propose relocation of most of its services, promising to maintain limited services on the S.R. 674 site, St. Joseph’s appealed the 2005 AHCA decision. As the St. Joseph appeal was in the judicial process, AHCA approved the HCA/South Bay relocation in December, 2007, despite high volume objections from the Sun City Center area.
However, in May, Judge J.D. Parrish, an administrative law jurist sitting in Tallahassee, concluded the St. Joseph’s appeal with recommendation that AHCA support its plan for a new Big Bend Road facility. Other factors in the mix include a new AHCA secretary appointed by the governor earlier this year and legislation passed in the 2008 session of the legislature which eliminates the Certificate of Need (CON) process that had been imposed on both hospital networks as they sought state approvals.
An AHCA decision, weighing its former nod of approval to HCA/South Bay and the judicial recommendation in favor of St. Joseph’s, is expected this summer.
©2008 Melody Jameson
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