Virginia officials say Chesapeake Regional Medical Center can start performing open heart surgeries, the conclusion to a years-long battle for approval that included legal infighting up to the state Supreme Court.
State Health Commissioner Dr. Colin Greene recently approved the hospital's application for a certificate of public need for the procedures. It’s a convoluted process Virginia uses to regulate health care operations.
“This project is a necessary and logical expansion of the current cardiac offerings at Chesapeake Regional,” President and CEO Reese Jackson said in a statement Monday. “We are making this commitment so that residents of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina will have better access to life saving services closer to their homes and workplaces."
Patients will no longer have to travel between providers or facilities to receive care, Jackson added.
Chesapeake Regional first applied to launch an open heart surgery program in 2017. Staff with the health department recommended approval as long as the hospital agreed to do a certain amount of charity care, according to court documents.
Sentara Healthcare soon petitioned to be involved in the decision. The hospital system disputed some of the medical numbers on which Chesapeake Regional’s application was based and argued that the project didn’t meet the standards for community need.
In 2018, then-Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver agreed and rejected the heart surgery application, stating in part that it duplicated existing services in the region and did not improve geographic or financial access for residents.
Chesapeake Regional sued Sentara and appealed the state’s decision in court, where it made its way to the Virginia Supreme Court. Last spring, a justice sided with the Chesapeake system, ruling that the state had erred in how it calculated public need.
That allowed the health system to re-apply last summer. Jackson told WHRO at the time that the Supreme Court's decision clarified what state officials should weigh in their deliberations.
Chesapeake Regional had also codified in law its ability to include North Carolina residents – who make up about 15% of its overall patient population – in the numbers.
In the meantime, Sentara agreed to drop its opposition to the heart program during a standoff over unrelated legislation at the General Assembly in 2019, the Daily Press reported at the time.
The certificate of public need system was created in 1973 because of a federal mandate that health care providers prove a community needs a facility before opening one. The mandate was repealed in 1986 but the program in the Commonwealth persists, according to the Medical Society of Virginia.
Commissioner Greene's approval stipulates that the hospitals open heart program will "inject beneficial competition in a highly concetrated" surgery market, Chesapeake Regional said.
The hospital plans to immediaetly begin installing equipment and hiring surgeons and other staff. Officials plan to start performing the surgeries early next year.
The heart program is one of several massive efforts the hospital’s undertaking for a total of about $150 million, including a new critical care tower, which opened in October, and increasing the size of postpartum rooms.
