"Danville delegate looks to restrict hospital sales"

Danville Register & Bee
Friday, February 1, 2008

RICHMOND - When Delegate Danny Marshall, R-Danville, crafted his legislation setting up some rules for sales of non-profit hospitals, he was hoping to save other communities from the upheaval Danville faced when its only hospital changed hands in 2005.
“This will not help Danville one bit - the horse is out of the barn, so to speak,” Marshall said Wednesday, adding that everything the hospital foundation board did was legal when Lifepoint Hospitals Inc. purchased Danville Regional Medical Center in July 2005.
Marshall said his main question then, and now, is, “Who owns a not-for-profit hospital? My mother-in-law worked at Dan River Mills for the majority of her life, along with thousands of other people. She told me that they did a payroll deduction there (that was) given to the hospital to start (it) and also to expand the hospital.
“The hospital, in my opinion, was owned by the public. The public should at least have notice the hospital’s going to be sold.”
The delegate’s original bill called for a public hearing at least six months prior to such a sale or before the conversion from non-profit to profit in order to let the public know if there would be any changes in staffing at the hospital and present a business plan to explain how the change would affect the community.
The bill also states that if a private foundation is set up in connection with the new for-profit hospital, that no previous member of the non-profit’s hospital board of directors could serve on the foundation’s board.
But when the bill went before the Health, Welfare and Institutions Committee this week, changes were made that reduced the amount of notice the public should get - now the bill states the public hearing should be held only 40 days before the sale - and the rule about who sits on the board was completely deleted.
The bill passed unanimously in committee is now on the House floor.
Marshall said the changes were necessary to ensure the bill passed, and that preventing members of a hospital’s board from sitting on any future foundation formed from the proceeds is “another bill for another day.”
He said it is crucial, especially in a one-hospital city like Danville, that the public be aware of such deals before they are finalized.
“It’s a lot different than if you have a not-for-profit hospital in a city like Richmond,” Marshall said. “If you don’t like the hospital down the street, you’ve got three more to go to. You don’t have that situation in a one-hospital town.”
Marshall acknowledged that there are still several people in Danville that are angry about the hospital’s sale and have expressed displeasure about the level of care at Danville Regional, preferring instead to go out of town whenever possible for hospital care.
“I hope they get the hospital fixed,” Marshall said. “If you go to those (out-of-town) hospitals and you are out-of-network, it costs a lot of money.”