EDITORIAL: Necessity or Waste? New Hospitals in Supply, N.C., Little River, Would Not Be Duplicative for Long

By The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Jan. 14–Medically speaking, Brunswick County, N.C., is between a rock and a hard place. The fast-growing but still mostly rural county lies between two population centers with large comprehensive hospitals: New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C., and Grand Strand Regional Medical Center in Horry County. Brunswick County residents have access to whatever medical services they need within reasonable driving — or ambulance — distance.

Just the same, Novant Health of Winston-Salem, N.C., the new operator of publicly owned Brunswick Community Hospital in Supply, N.C., aggressively seeks state Division of Facility Services approval to construct a 92-bed hospital building. That facility would duplicate some services available in Myrtle Beach and Wilmington — normally a killer for such applications. But thanks to rampant growth, Novant’s case for developing higher level medical services in Supply is compelling.

Getting to groundbreaking won’t be easy. New Hanover Regional is already on record opposing an expansion of the Supply hospital. If the state approves the 92 beds anyway, New Hanover Regional, long the go-to hospital for Brunswick County residents in need of sophisticated medical services, would likely appeal — on the ground that a larger Brunswick Community Hospital would undermine services and facilities already available in Wilmington, driving up health-care costs in the region.

This is essentially the same argument Grand Strand Regional Medical Center raised last year in appealing the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control approval of Loris Healthcare’s application to build a 50-bed hospital in Little River. A New Hanover Regional appeal could plunge Novant’s bid to expand the Brunswick Community Hospital into bureaucratic limbo, as happened with Loris Healthcare’s application for the Little River hospital. Until the appeal was settled, which could take years, Brunswick County residents would continue to journey to Wilmington for high-level hospital services — just as North Strand residents must meet hospital needs in Conway and Myrtle Beach.

Brunswick County residents, however, have good reason to hope that Novant’s efforts to build a new hospital in Supply eventually will succeed. If their county isn’t already populous enough to support a larger hospital efficiently, it soon will be.

Consider: A few years back, N.C. authorities authorized Brunswick Community to add 32 hospital beds — which never happened because its previous operating company, corporately associated with Grand Strand Regional, never got them built. Since that approval was granted, 20,000 new residents have moved to Brunswick County — justifying, says Novant, the current application for 92 beds. It’s reasonable to expect that many more to move into the county over the next several years. Most of those new residents will be older folks who need medical services more often — and more urgently — than folks younger than 55.

We’re not arguing — and never would — that approving agencies in both Carolinas should declare open season on hospital construction across our communities. But given our communities’ rampant growth, it’s hard to imagine that the proposed hospitals for Supply and, for that matter, Little River, would harm the region’s comprehensive hospitals for long.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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