Loudoun County will become home to a second hospital in the Broadlands development, as announced Monday by the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA).
HCA plans to build a 180-bed hospital near the Dulles Greenway to replace two existing facilities in northern Virginia, including Dominion Psychiatric Hospital in Falls Church and the Northern Virginia Community Hospital in Arlington. HCA already owns the Falls Church facility and agreed to purchase the Arlington facility last week.
“Both of these hospitals are in outdated or older buildings that need to be replaced with modern up-to-date technologically advanced facilities,” said Bill Adams, president and CEO of the Reston Hospital Center, which HCA opened in 1986.
HCA plans to combine the services provided by the Falls Church and the Arlington hospitals, which were opened in the 1960s, into one building. The new hospital will offer psychiatric care, general acute care and medical and surgical services on a 57-acre site HCA agreed to purchase from TerraBrook, the developer of Broadlands.
HCA REPRESENTATIVES met with Loudoun County and Leesburg officials, along with members of the Loudoun Healthcare Task Force, during the past six months to determine the need for additional hospital services. The need for more beds and additional services in the area, along with psychiatric care, were identified, Adams said.
“It’s good for a number of reasons, [including] the tremendous growth Loudoun County has already experienced. There’s a need for additional hospital services, and that’s only going to go up,” Adams said. “Both Reston and Loudoun hospitals are extremely busy. It used to be a wintertime phenomenon. Now, it’s year-round.”
Rodney Huebbers, president and CEO of the Loudoun Hospital, disagreed with the need for two hospitals in Loudoun.
“The proposed action by Northern Virginia Community Hospital (HCA) comes as no surprise given the competitive nature of our regional health care-related services or in light of the county’s growth,” Huebbers said in a separate statement. “No one would stand in the way of projects designed to improve healthcare delivery for our community unless those projects would impede … delivery. Even with our county’s growth, the population is still too small to adequately support two hospitals.”
Huebbers said the combined hospital could potentially draw patients from Loudoun Hospital and related entities and undermine the hospital’s ability to develop additional facilities. “Loudoun Hospital will not hesitate to oppose any … application that will interfere with its ability to provide for the healthcare needs of the county in an economically viable manner,” he said.
HCA PLANS to file a certificate of need with the state by July 1. Construction on the combined hospital is expected to begin in mid-2003 for an opening in January 2006. Construction costs and the size of the building have not been determined, Adams said.
“A level of competition is good. … All of us benefit from competition,” Adams said.
HCA is headquartered in Nashville, Tenn. and operates 185 hospitals, along with several freestanding surgery and diagnostic centers. The Loudoun Hospital Center opened a hospital in 1912 that currently is located in Lansdowne and plans to open a second emergency room at the Cornwall campus in Leesburg. Loudoun Hospital Center filed a letter of intent in May to expand the Lansdowne facility from 133 to between 190-205 beds.