Wellmont’s plan for a rehab hospital stalls after failing to receive a certificate of need

BRISTOL, Va. – It may be next year before Wellmont Health System officials learn if they can build a rehabilitation hospital in the city.

In April, the local hospital chain announced plans to open a 25-bed, 20,000-square-foot rehabilitation facility in part of the Ridgeview Pavilion building on North Street.

The plans, however, were delayed this summer, when the Health Planning Agency of Southwest Virginia, a regional division of the state Department of Health, voted 5-4 to recommend denying Wellmont’s request for a certificate of public need. The facility can’t be built without approval from the Virginia Department of Health.

Wellmont appealed the decision and stated its case during a hearing in Richmond.

"We made a presentation to the [state] adjudication officer in September," Wellmont spokesman Brad Lifford said Wednesday. "His report will go to the commissioner of health, probably in the next couple of months."

The planned rehab space included the former Bristol Regional Speech and Hearing Center, which moved out in early September to make way for the facility.

The proposed center would be a joint effort with HealthSouth Corp., of Birmingham, Ala.

"We think we made a good case," Lifford said. "There is a need for an inpatient rehabilitation hospital in Bristol, and we expect a favorable decision."

At the Health Planning Agency’s July hearing, Johnson City-based Mountain States Health Alliance – Wellmont’s regional health-care counterpart – claimed the Bristol facility isn’t needed.

MSHA officials argued that their own 60-bed James and Cecile Quillen Rehabilitation Hospital in Johnson City and the Wellmont/HealthSouth 50-bed center in Kingsport meet the rehabilitation needs of the region.

The Kingsport facility frequently has a high volume of patients, Lifford said, which is part of Wellmont’s argument in favor of a Bristol facility.

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