The S.C. House voted Wednesday on a bill that, if passed, would reduce regulations for building and expanding hospitals and other medical facilities in the state.
House Bill 3250 - better known as the Certificate of Need, or CON, bill - passed almost unanimously in a 103 to 1 fashion.
According to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, the CON law was put in place to control health care costs by preventing overbuilding of health care facilities and services in one area.
Specifically, the certificate of need requires hospitals to seek approval to buy equipment that costs more than $600,000, expand facilities or open new ones. In the coming years, some legislators are hoping to completely eradicate the bill. For now, reductions under the bill, if passed by the General Assembly and signed into law, would include eliminating a committee currently in charge of regulating the need for medical facilities in regions across the state.
In exchange, the health agency would use statistical data to monitor the need. Sumter Republican Murrell Smith led Wednesday's debate before the vote and voiced his support for the measure.
"The state health plan right now says, 'we do this many open heart procedures or whatever in this region,'" Smith explained. "So instead of having a committee that does that, we're going to be driven by statistical data and not what a committee says the needs are."
Other revisions the House is looking to add to the bill include steps in the legal process. Currently, if a medical facility files a complaint on another facility moving into an area or purchasing new equipment, attorney fees must be paid by each party. The new bill states that if the hospital filing the complaint loses the appeal, that hospital is responsible for all legal fees.
"This is an area that deserves some type of consequences for what I call frivolous appeals," Smith added.
The entire Aiken delegation voted in favor of the House bill. Aiken Republican Bill Taylor said the certificate of need program no longer ensures better health care in South Carolina due to the state government picking "winners and losers in granting CON's."
"The overwhelming vote to phase out the CON by 2018 helps deregulate health care and allow for free market forces to operate," Taylor said. "Importantly, the House bill allows existing CON holders to expand services and facilities without seeking further approval from the government."
Taylor added that the phasing out of CON opens the door to the addition of much-needed nursing home beds in Aiken County - a measure he hopes encourages nursing homes to locate to eastern Aiken County to serve the Wagener area.
Derrek Asberry is the SRS beat reporter for the Aiken Standard and has been with the paper since June 2013. He is originally from Vidalia, Ga., and a graduate of Georgia Southern University. Follow him on Twitter @DerrekAsberry.