Local state lawmakers signaled recently that the Georgia General Assembly may take a look at laws that allow healthcare providers to block competitors from offering services.
The state currently requires hospitals and other providers to obtain a certificate of need (CON) to expand or add services. The process of granting certificates of need is supposed to reduce duplication of services. Critics say the process can be used to block competition and make it harder for hospitals to offer new services.
“Hospitals support CON when it works for them and oppose it when it works against them,” said state Rep. Kasey Carpenter, R-Dalton, during a Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce Breakfast with the Legislators on Friday.
“We have to figure out a way where, at least, if somebody wants to do something in South Georgia, somebody in North Georgia can’t say no,” Carpenter said. “That’s what happens now. I just don’t think that’s right. I understand hospitals don’t want someone coming in and cherry-picking something that is profitable and leaving you with what is unprofitable. But there has to be some reform.”
State Sen. Chuck Payne, R-Dalton, agrees that the CON process “needs to be tweaked.”
“But I do think there needs to be protection,” he said. “That we are not over-flooding the market with certain things and making sure that we are making the right decisions, especially in rural communities.”
State Rep. Steve Tarvin, R-Chickamauga, said he, too, thinks there should be some reform of the CON process.
“We need to research and do what is best for the people of Georgia,” he said.
Jeff Myers, president and CEO of Hamilton Health Care System, was in attendance at the breakfast. He said afterward the CON requirement assures that “we don’t have an oversupply of providers in a given area.”
“In the nonprofit arena, we have to take care of the whole community,” he said. “But those for-profit entities are only interested in the services they can make money on. They aren’t going to provide services that cost them money.”
Potential CON reform was one of several topics of interest to the local business community that chamber President Jason Mock, who moderated the event, asked the lawmakers about.
Mock asked them about the state’s pre-kindergarten program. Some Republican leaders have called for increasing funding for that program, to both increase pay for teachers and to reduce class size.
“There’s no doubt about it,” said Carpenter. “The money is there, from the lottery. It’s coming for sure. We can’t keep paying what we’ve been paying and expect them to keep staff.”
Payne, who retired as a state juvenile probation officer, said he knows from experience “how important those early years are” for a child and said he supports more assistance for pre-k.
Mock also asked if there could be action to legalize sports gambling in Georgia during the current legislative session.
“The mill worker in Dalton is not calling me asking for that,” said Payne.
Tarvin said he could not vote for legalized gambling but he might support putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would allow voters to decide whether to legalize gambling.
Carpenter said he could support legalizing sports betting.
“It’s already happening,” he said.
Carpenter said people who want to bet on sports are already betting online or with “a local bookie.”
“I think making it legal would improve safety,” he said. “You could bet only if you had the money, so you don’t get upside down with a bookie.”