Trident Health System Concerned over Award of Two Certificate of Need Applications

(Charleston, S.C.) -- Trident Health System was stunned by the news that the South Carolina Department of Health and Environment Control awarded Certificates of Need (CON) to both Trident and Roper Hospital.  Each hospital made applications for a CON to build a 50-bed hospital in Berkeley County.  Trident Health System has proposed to build Berkeley Regional Medical Center (BRMC) in Moncks Corner, S.C. while Roper Hospital proposes to build in the Carnes Crossroads area of Goose Creek.  Trident has maintained its position throughout this process that under the legal and health planning practices that DHEC must enforce, only one hospital project could be approved.

Trident Health System believes that it submitted a superior application and was the only application that qualified for approval.  Trident proposed to continue its more than 35-year commitment to Berkeley County by building a hospital in Moncks Corner so that all residents would be adequately served and travel time for residents, especially those living in the northern part of the county, would be significantly decreased.  The centrally located BRMC will enable critically needed care to be provided faster, reduce travel time for patients and their family members and in the most extreme circumstances, save lives.

“The Certificate of Need process has many facets, but one of the most important is to provide quality care to residents in a timely and fair manner.  While quickly adding two hospitals to Berkeley County will always sound like a good idea at first, DHEC failed to acknowledge the reality that allowing both hospitals to be built will undermine any chance of either of them becoming financially viable in the near future.  As a result of DHEC’s decisions, all Berkeley County residents will suffer in the long run,” said Todd Gallati, chief executive officer at Trident Health System.  “We are disappointed and believe the State Health Plan and CON laws were not followed in this case.”

During a hearing at DHEC in late May, both groups presented cases on why their proposal should be awarded.  Trident Health System demonstrated that if both hospitals were approved, they would lose a combined total of $58 million over the first five years of operations alone.  During that same presentation, Trident showed that if they were the sole CON recipient, the proposed facility would break even after only two years, employ over 350 people and would significantly increase the tax revenue Trident currently pays to Berkeley County.

Gallati says, “We feel that DHEC has an obligation to make tough decisions and that they opted for an easy, but financially unsound, solution to resolve these competing applications.  Because both projects cannot be financially successful, we will now be forced to appeal DHEC’s decisions – costing both organizations time and money.”

Trident Health System began serving Berkeley County and the tri-county area in 1975, when Berkeley and Dorchester County Hospitals closed and the North Trident Regional Hospital opened.  Since that time, Trident Health System has grown into a family of hospitals including Trident Medical Center; Summerville Medical Center; and Moncks Corner Medical Center, a free-standing emergency department.  For more information, please contact Melanie Williams, AVP marketing, Trident Health System at 843-847-4143.

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