WV News
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WV News) — St. Joseph’s Hospital of Buckhannon Inc. is appealing a decision by the West Virginia Health Care Authority that allows Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital Co. to relocate its hospital without obtaining a Certificate of Need. The case, St. Joseph’s Hospital of Buckhannon Inc. vs. Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital Co. and West Virginia Health Care Authority, is scheduled for a Rule 20 oral argument before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals on Wednesday, Sept. 17, in Charleston.
St. Joseph’s argues that the Health Care Authority and the Intermediate Court of Appeals misapplied state law, specifically West Virginia Code § 16-2D-8(a)(1) and § 16-2D-8(a)(5), which govern certificate of need requirements. St. Joseph’s contends that Stonewall’s project, involving the “construction, development, acquisition, or other establishment of a health care facility,” and a “substantial change to the bed capacity” due to bed relocation, necessitates a CON.
Stonewall’s proposed new facility would be a 29-bed hospital located 4.2 miles southeast of its current site in Weston, Lewis County. The estimated cost of the relocation is approximately $56 million. This new location is about 12 miles from St. Joseph’s, which is a 25-bed critical access hospital in Buckhannon, Upshur County. St. Joseph’s’s critical access hospital status requires it to be located more than 15 mountainous terrain miles from another hospital, and the relocation of Stonewall would jeopardize this designation, potentially leading to St. Joseph’s’s closure, it argues.
