D.C. Member Seeks Certificate of Need
By Eric M. Weiss and Susan Levine
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 23, 2006
The District's proposed $400 million National Capital Medical Center encountered a serious setback yesterday when D.C. Council member Sharon Ambrose vowed not to take action on key legislation unless the project goes through a lengthy certificate of need process.
Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) has recommended building the 250 - bed hospital in partnership with Howard University, which has suggested that it would pull out unless the city waives the certificate process, designed to encourage accountability within health care and to discourage unnecessary duplication of services.
Ambrose (D-Ward 6), chairman of one of the four council committees that have been asked to approve legislation for the project, said she will not take action on a lease for the hospital without the certificate.
Ambrose's pledge could stop the ambitious hospital plan in its tracks.
"If the city council does not give approval to the lease, then there is no project,'' said City Administrator Robert C. Bobb. "We can't build this hospital in the air.''
A Howard spokeswoman did not return multiple calls or respond to e-mailed questions.
Both detractors and proponents of the hospital plan said the decision by council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D) to divide the consideration of the bill among four committees has created new doubts about project's future.
Sharon Baskerville of the D.C. Primary Care Association, who has long argued against the project and for greater investment in the community clinics her organization represents, said Cropp's decision "decimates" the hospital project. "Parceling it up causes multiple hearings, delays, potential confusion and more questions," she said.
Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), who will control a large part of the legislation as health committee chairman, is also opposed to any review exemption. Catania, the hospital's most vocal critic, was sick yesterday and could not be reached for comment.
Cropp disagreed that referring five bills related to the project to several committees has placed the project in jeopardy.
"Oh, no, not in the least," she said. "Folks want it to be done. This is an issue that is important to many members on the council, and I do not see any one council member holding up an issue of such importance to the city."
The National Capital Medical Center, which would be built on the grounds of the former D.C. General Hospital at Massachusetts Avenue and 19th Street SE, is being touted as a state-of-the-art teaching and research complex that would bring top-level trauma care and other sophisticated hospital services to a part of the District where all are lacking.
Williams's successful push to close D.C. General, the city's only public hospital, in 2001 created a firestorm of opposition in the neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River and among council members. Williams said the facility drained the city's treasury while providing poor medical care. Critics said the closure showed that Williams cared little for the city's poor and sick.
Council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7), one of the council's most vocal supporters of the hospital plan, said Cropp should have allowed the entire council to review the bills with committee action limited to comments.
"Given the complexity of the situation, the various pieces of the legislation should be kept intact,'' he said. "A lease over here, a grant over there, a certificate of need somewhere else; it doesn't seem very effective.''
Cropp said council rules required that the hospital go through the committee process. She did, however, send a memo to colleagues saying, "I encourage the coordination of the council's review of these measures, including, if possible, holding a joint hearing on these measures."
Meanwhile, Baskerville questioned the depth of the Williams administration's continuing commitment to the medical center. "I think the truth is, they're looking at the council to kill it." As for a Plan B if that happens, "there is none," she said.
Bobb said the mayor is firmly behind the plan, which includes a waiver of the certificate of need process.
The waiver has emerged as a key obstacle between the administration and the council. The District and 26 states mandate evaluations of major construction, expansion or modernization of medical facilities.
"Howard's decision to proceed," it noted, "will depend on the financial feasibility of the Project with the increased construction costs'' caused by any delays from the certificate of need process.
Bobb said the administration looks forward to making its case at the next hearing on the medical center, set for March 13.
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