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UPDATE: Lawsuit dies, Broadlands hospital lives
Instead of starting a weeklong trial in Loudoun County Circuit Court March 10, hospital corporation HCA has been invited to resubmit to the county government its request to build Broadlands Regional Medical Center in Ashburn.
Supervisors voted 5-4 March 5 to consider a new application for the 164-bed hospital, in exchange for HCA's dropping all the charges that were going to be argued in court.
Chairman Scott York (I-at large) has supported the Broadlands application since it was first submitted. Lawsuits challenging the board's decisions, he pointed out, are part of life.
Supervisor Jim Burton (I-Blue Ridge) voted against the deal. "This settlement allows HCA to hold litigation over our heads while they submit a new application," Burton said. "They will sue us again. I would prefer to go to trial Monday."
HCA was prepared to argue that the previous Board of Supervisors' denial of its application to build a hospital on Broadlands Boulevard was arbitrary and capricious, and that the denial violated HCA's rights to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution.
The key claim in the lawsuit, HCA's Mark Foust said, was that the board had approved 86 of 87 special exception requests since taking office in January 2004. Only the HCA special exception was denied.
Under the agreement with this Board of Supervisors, HCA retains the right to pursue in a higher court its claim that the state's approval trumps local land powers. Circuit Court Judge Thomas D. Horne dismissed that claim from the original lawsuit.
Foust said HCA will submit an application, essentially identical to the one denied in August 2005, to the county in the next few weeks. That plan was for an acute-care hospital of 164 beds -- 96 medical/surgical, 40 child/adolescent psychiatric, 12 obstetrical and 16 intensive care.
Margaret Lewis, president of HCA's Capital Division, said dismissing the lawsuit "gives the [current] board an opportunity to evaluate our application without preconditions or the pressure of looming litigation."
HCA, formerly Hospital Corporation of America, first applied to build a hospital on 58 acres just west of the Loudoun County Public Schools administration building on Broadlands Boulevard in 2002. The State Health Commissioner awarded a COPN, or Certificate of Public Need, for that project in early 2005, but in August the Board of Supervisors turned down the land-use application. They cited excessive noise, traffic and activity adjacent to a residential neighborhood.
The HCA lawsuit also challenged a May 2005 amendment to the county's comprehensive plan that mapped out the locations of existing and future health-care facilities. That map did not include a hospital in Broadlands, but it did specify putting one on U.S. 50 in the Dulles District.
That addition to the Comprehensive Plan, according to the lawsuit, was authored by Loudoun Hospital – now Inova Loudoun Hospital – and was designed to prevent legitimate competition.
HCA is the largest for-profit hospital business in the country and in Virginia. Nonprofit Inova Loudoun hospital has fought plans since they were first filed in 2002 to put a competing hospital five miles from its Lansdowne facility.
Both HCA and Inova have purchased land along U.S. 50 and announced plans to develop health-care facilities there. Supervisors last month approved Inova's special exception zoning to build a hospital on 94 acres at the corner of U.S. 50 and Racefield Lane in Arcola. HCA's application to build on 49 acres abutting the Inova property to the east is working its way through the county's approval system.
Inova Loudoun Chief Operating Officer Susan Carroll characterized the lawsuit's demise and the reactivation of the Broadlands application as holding the future of health care in Loudoun hostage "by trying to force a hospital into a residential neighborhood that is not zoned for a hospital."
A hospital on U.S. 50, Carroll said, "is consistent with the Comprehensive Plan that seeks to ensure adequate access to health care for all citizens in all parts of the county. We don't think it's rocket science to determine where the next hospital in Loudoun County should be built."
HCA's state approval for the Broadlands site must be renewed this spring. The two U.S. 50 projects must secure approval of the land use by the county – Inova has that in hand – and approval from the state regulators. Neither HCA nor Inova has yet applied for a COPN.
Contact the reporter at ssollinger@timespapers.com
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