LewisGale continues fight for NICU
An ongoing battle with the state for a neonatal intensive care unit led LewisGale Medical Center to launch a petition last week to document community support for the effort.
Collecting signatures comes as LewisGale has filed a new application asking Virginia Department of Health Commissioner Karen Remley for permission to open an eight-bassinet NICU. She denied an identical request last year, saying that the addition of NICU services at LewisGale would unnecessarily duplicate and harm existing services available for the tiniest patients.
LewisGale’s chief competitor, Carilion Clinic, operates a NICU with 60 bassinets at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Carilion opposes LewisGale’s effort to open a NICU, and Carilion spokesman Eric Earnhart said in an email that its NICU has “a consistent vacancy rate of at least 10-12 beds.”
While LewisGale appealed the commissioner’s decision to Salem Circuit Court, the hospital decided to simultaneously file the new application with more recent data on its maternity business. According to the application, births at the Salem hospital increased 21 percent from 2010 to 2011.
Still, just 15 newborns had to be transferred to a NICU last year, and infant transfers represent about 2 percent of the total births at the hospital.
LewisGale, however, argues that because it doesn’t have a NICU many pregnant women decide to seek care with other providers prior to delivery. Women with known high-risk pregnancies are transferred to other providers when there is evidence that the unborn child may need NICU services.
In response to questions, LewisGale issued a statement reiterating its previous position that a NICU is needed to provide high-quality care to mothers and newborns.
“LewisGale Medical Center is fully and passionately committed to providing NICU services and is vigorously pursuing all possible avenues to secure approval of this much-needed service for the families and communities we serve,” the statement said in part.
In the latest application, LewisGale said adding the NICU would cost $3.6 million. The initial application said it would cost $3.4 million.
A public hearing on the latest application has been set for March 30 at 1 p.m. at Virginia Western Community College.
March 16, 2012 - 3:59 PM
Since Carilion has more beds than it needs, maybe those 12 beds should go to Lewis Gale?
Our region needs this!!! Having delivered a 26 weeker preemie almost 9 years ago, although I lived in Southwest Virginia no local hospitals could take her. This was due to no beds in the NICU. My daughter was born at Wytheville Community Hospital and we thought she was going to Roanoke only for me to find out in the operating room she wasn’t. Later on I learned that Brenner’s in Winston-Salem couldn’t take her either due to no beds. Johnson City Medical Center in Johnson City , TN stepped up to the plate and said they would take her. Instead of our baby being in Roanoke that should have been not quiet an hour and a half drive the drive to JCMC was almost two and a half hours. Critical time lost trying to find a NICU and really phectic that they had to do as much as they did to find one. There are also beds in the NICU that I honestly believe are taken up by infants that only need minimal care (feed and grow preemies) that can be done in another unit. This would free up valuable and precious bed space for those babies who are born so critical. I will gladly stand with Lewis Gale on this issue!!!!!
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Lewis Gale is right, a lot of pregnant women choose Carilion docs “in case” they need access to a NICU. The last time I visited my doc at Lewis Gale, they asked me to sign the petition.
Sadly, we will see the same outcome for LewisGale. It’s unfortunate that Carilion holds this much power in the region that it can prevent another hospital from offering services that benefit their patients. Politics and money drive everything and this is a perfect example. Fight on LGMC -Fight on!
Karen Remley…denied an identical request last year, saying that the addition of NICU services at LewisGale would unnecessarily duplicate and harm existing services available for the tiniest patients.
This, right here, is an illustration of why health care costs are so astronomical…government interference.
The implication is that there can only be a set amount of NICU bassinets for the valley, and presumably she uses the same metrics to ‘regulate’ the number of NICU beds in other areas of the state (though one wonders how much of the metrics involve Carilion dollars). This number can be nothing more than an arbitrary number as she has no bearing whatsoever on the quality of care for the tiniest patients…in fact, limiting the availability of those services inhibits the quality of care.
Let’s follow this through: if LG opens up a NICU with 12 bassinets. What will happen? Well, they would provide some competition for Carilion, meaning the price will come down for both places. Additionally, as the hospitals compete, the care will improve for both facilities, because the hospitals need to attract and keep business. That’s terrific for the consumer, and more important, the tiniest patients.
Without that competition Carilion has a state-granted monopoly, meaning they need only meet the bare minimum in quality of care, and can charge what they wish.
I love the implication that “Carilion Dollars” were involved in the decision. If you look at the “metrics” then HCA Virginia (a subgroup of HCA America, the largest Health Care organization in America) has a LOT more beds than Carilion does. Or ever will, really.
Facts are facts, even if they hurt. Carilion jumped on it early, and thus has more facilities available in the area. Lewis Gale could have done it decades ago, but didn’t.
6 – whether “Carilion Dollars” had anything to do with it or not (and I’ll accept your word that they did not) doesn’t change the fact that the state has no business dictating how many products or services can be provided anywhere, and they certainly have no business dictating WHO can provide those products or services thereby creating a monopoly and limiting choice to the public. LG should should be allowed to offer NICU bassinets, and compete with Carilion. The public can only benefit.
That principle applies everywhere in the free market, and for any product, whether NICU services, or widgets at a retail store. The government needs to butt out (and think how much state tax dollars could be saved by scaling back the bureaucracy).
As for Carilion, they delivered (via c-section) our little girl a little more than a year ago, and we could not have been happier with the service, professionalism and quality of care they provided. They were terrific. We didn’t need the NICU services, but I feel confident that if we had, they would have provided the same level of quality.
The bottom line: Carilion should be able to handle the competition. If they cannot, then that is a problem they should be able to address, but in any event, the competition serves the public better than a state-dictated monopoly.