EDITORIAL: A Kernersville Hospital

By Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.

Aug. 2–Leaders with Forsyth Medical Center and the town of Kernersville have waged a good fight to win state approval to put a hospital in the town. Now, the medical center should hustle to get the 50-bed hospital built and opened. That’s because, despite the state’s initial reservations, the need for the hospital is obvious.

Last fall, after the state ruled against the medical center’s plan to build the hospital, it didn’t look as though the project would ever get approved.

A hard-hitting report from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services found fault with the center’s projections on the number of people who would make use of the hospital’s beds. And the High Point Regional Health System said that the original proposed site was too close to its hospital.

The center made more conservative projections. It focused on a site north of Interstate 40 instead of south of it, and that shift in location probably helped ease the opposition from the High Point health system. And some Kernersville residents mounted a letter-writing campaign in support of a hospital in their town.

The hospital will cost about $84 million to build and will bring more than 300 jobs and a $17 million payroll to Kernersville, medical center officials say.

Kernersville, like most other towns in this state, certainly needs the jobs. The hospital should attract other medical-related businesses. And the town can use the hospital as a selling point in its efforts to attract new companies in general.

But what’s most important is the patients whom the hospital can better serve, and the lives that it might be able to save.

Sure, there are hospitals in Winston-Salem, High Point and Greensboro within a 30-minute drive of Kernersville. But the difference of an extra few minutes of driving can be the difference between life and death. And even in regard to less crucial health matters, Kernersville is a growing city whose residents shouldn’t have to rely on the hospitals in the larger cities.

The hospital will have 46 acute-care beds, a four-bed intensive care unit, four operating rooms, an emergency department with 14 treating rooms, imaging services, and laboratory and pharmacy services, the Journal’s Wesley Young reported last week. Medical center officials say that it could open within a couple of years.

“If humanly possible, the hospital will open in 2009,” said Greg Beier, the chief executive of the medical center.

The sooner the better. Kernersville needs a hospital. Leaders with the medical center and the town have waged a good fight to deliver it one.

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