Cabinet for Health and Family Services Changes Regulation In Effort to Help Greenview Hospital After Losing Recent Battle Over Ambulance Service
The Cabinet for Health and Family Services has changed a regulation following Greenview Hospital’s recent defeat in its attempt to establish an ambulance service in Warren County. The Cabinet’s changes improperly favor TriStar Greenview Hospital, an HCA-affiliated, for-profit, Tennessee-based corporation. The newly amended regulation brazenly seeks to remove the obstacles Greenview encountered when its Certificate of Need application was denied on January 4, 2019.
“Quite honestly, we are at a loss for words,” said Wade Stone, Executive Vice President of Med Center Health. “The Cabinet unnecessarily took aim at Warren County last September by crafting special legislation to benefit Greenview. It failed to get the wording right the first time, so now it is continuing its assault on Warren County and Med Center Health by amending the regulation. The Cabinet is dead set on helping Greenview feed market share to its affiliated hospitals in Tennessee under the disguise of addressing a non-existent ‘public health crisis.’ It’s baffling at best, and we question the real motives behind such behavior.”
Med Center Health has a lawsuit pending in Franklin Circuit Court which challenges the constitutionality of the regulation issued last September. Kentucky law prohibits the creation of laws and regulations that are written for the purpose of benefiting a specific organization.
“The Cabinet’s statement accompanying the new regulation point blank admits that the Cabinet is actively trying to interfere in the CON process, a process that is supposed to be free from political interference. Both the original and amended regulations were developed for the sole purpose of benefiting one particular corporation, Greenview. Not only do these regulations threaten to disrupt what is regarded as one of the very best ambulance service operations in the Commonwealth, but they expose Warren County taxpayers to a substantial tax burden that has been avoided for nearly forty years.” Stone concluded, “We look forward to presenting evidence of these illegal actions by the Cabinet in a court of law, where political influence is
