Medical Campus Set For West of Dulles

Virginia's largest for-profit health-care provider will announce plans today to build a new medical campus in southern Loudoun County, directly challenging a similar development proposed last year by its main local rival.

The project by HCA Virginia, to be located just west of Dulles International Airport at Route 50 and Gum Spring Road (Route 659), could include a doctors' office building, various outpatient medical facilities and, in the future, a hospital.

The 49-acre site is less than half a mile from property where the nonprofit Inova Health System intends to construct a medical office building, imaging center and urgent care facility.

The dual ventures could set off yet another round of competition as the two organizations vie for prominence in fast-growing Loudoun. HCA Virginia has received state authorization -- though not county zoning approval -- for a new 164-bed hospital in the Broadlands development on the county's eastern side. Inova Loudoun Hospital, which sits five miles to the north in Lansdowne, is challenging the certificate of public need in court.

State regulators would have to sign off on elements of each medical campus proposal, but other aspects, such as emergency and urgent care centers, could move forward on their own.

"We're doing our best to meet short- and long-term need," Mark Foust, an HCA Virginia vice president, said yesterday. The company will build the Route 50 site in phases, he said, with the initial specifics to be determined after a study of population trends and health-care needs that will not be completed until late fall, at the earliest.

No cost projection or construction timetable is available, Foust said.

Even with the area's rapid growth, there likely will be questions whether two parallel developments in such close proximity could succeed.

"I would imagine that both places would see some patient volume," said H. Patrick Walters, executive vice president of Inova's western region.

Foust said HCA paid $19 million for its new property, which is zoned for outpatient medical facility use.