Bid to shield hospital advances
Staff writer
A proposed zoning change that would restrict competitors wanting to open another hospital in Marion seems to be moving forward despite firm opposition from the city’s planning commission.
City council members unanimously voted Monday to send the ordinance back to the planning commission for review before the council schedules a final vote.
“They can make whatever recommendation they want to, and certainly we will consider that,” Mayor Michael Powers said. “But at this point, I want to get it up here so we can put it to the public.”
Administrator Brian Wells said that, technically, the council would not have to schedule a public hearing about the ordinance. A public discussion is the goal, however, St. Luke Hospital chief executive Alex Haines said.
“It doesn’t have to be a public hearing for [the planning commission] next time,” Wells said.
Wells said if the council was to alter any of the ordinance’s language, they could present it at the next planning commission meeting on the last Tuesday of the month. If the council would like to make no changes, then Wells said he can take it back to the commission as soon as possible.
No planning commission members were present at Monday’s meeting.
At a public hearing earlier this month, the commission expressed concerns regarding the size and where a hospital would be located.
The original proposal states the site should be two acres with a minimum 100-foot width.
“The defunct Family Dollar store in the industrial park would not qualify to be used as a medical facility,” planning commission chairman Darvin Markley said Tuesday. “It’s too small. It’s just a little over an acre-and-a-half. They required two.”
Council members said Monday that the district should span across the city. Restrictions would not apply if an organization set up outside city limits.
Ultimately, Markley said, he thinks it should be up to state legislatures to decide whether to approve a competing hospital.
“We look at land issues to make sure they’re not building an industrial [complex] by a house,” Markley said. “That’s what we’re supposed to do. Not saying, ‘Well, you know, you’ve got to have five acres to build that dentist office.’ You just don’t do that with zoning.”
The proposed ordinance would prevent medical facilities, offices and institutions, other than St. Luke from providing services in the city without meeting the ordinance’s requirements.
Haines said the proposal would seek to protect St. Luke from specialty providers offering profitable services like cardiology and radiology, leaving hospitals responsible for less-profitable services like emergency room care and long-term care. He called these “carve-out” services.
“Our job is to have a combination of both and at the end of the year, we have a positive margin,” he said. “What we’re seeing is entities coming in and carving out profitable things … and they’ll leave the local hospital to take on the things that are not profitable and provide that service.”
Haines said the proposed district was not in response to a provider already attempting to establish a practice within the city.
“Some of our peers, we have seen them kind of react to something coming in,” Haines said. “We’re trying to put something in place that causes a lot less controversy than someone who’s already on their way in and having to decide if you’re going to put some barriers in their way.”
Marion’s proposed ordinance was modeled after one in Hillsboro.
Hillsboro created its hospital zone to “permit operation of a hospital facility that provides medical primarily for inpatient care and to provide health, medical, mental, and surgical care of the sick or injured,” according to the ordinance. “This district also provides for the establishment of medical laboratories, which provide bacteriological, biological, medical, X-ray, pathological, and other similar analytical or diagnostic services in a medical context.”
Marion’s proposal lists a greater number of services, including computed tomography scans — a profitable service, Haines said after the meeting.
St. Luke is a not-for-profit district hospital that receives about $800,000 a year in property tax and serves a large area of the county, Haines said.