Road project moving ahead for Columbia County hospital

AU Medical Center's license to build the first hospital in Columbia County is still under appeal but a road project to create greater access to the future hospital is moving forward, the chair of AU Health System board said Thursday.

The health system's new CEO is also promising a "clear and achievable path" back to profitability. 

Columbia County is the largest county in Georgia without a hospital and AUMC was one of three in Augusta competing to build one there when it was awarded that license in November 2014. One of those competitors, Doctors Hospital of Augusta, has been appealing the decision ever since, now challenging the exception the state used to award the license that allows building any hospital in the county.

The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled against Doctors on April 30 and Doctors then asked the Georgia Supreme Court to hear the case on May 20 and AUMC and the Georgia Department of Community Health objected to that in June. It could take four to five months for the court to decide whether it will hear the appeal. If it is denied, that then allows AUMC to have the license and begin construction, said AUMC spokeswoman Denise Parrish.

But things are going to begin happening on the site perhaps sooner than that, said AU Health Chair Jim Hull, a member of the University System of Georgia Board of Regents. The 82-acre proposed hospital site is served by Gateway Boulevard, which dead-ends into the U-shaped property. The long-term plan has been to extend that road through to link up to Wrightsboro Road but that has now been moved up, he said.

"At this time, Columbia County intends to accelerate the extension of Gateway Boulevard," Hull said. "We'd always known or hoped that it would be extended and it will be extended from our property all the way to Wrightsboro Road. It is quite a good thing for this property." The county has also agreed to pay $285,000 for the property the project would take, he said. 

ew AU Health CEO Katrina Keefer, who gave a quick update of her whirlwind first 33 days, said she is reworking the Fiscal Year 2020 operating and capital budgets to create a "clear and achievable path to stability" after the health system appeared to be headed toward a $24 million loss last fiscal year. The board's Finance Committee spent most of its time Thursday in a long executive session and no numbers were presented during its open meeting or the subsequent board meeting. 

Keefer reiterated that the health system is not large enough to support Medical College of Georgia, the country's eighth largest medicals school, and to also train the other health professionals and she intends to seek out "partnerships" with providers across the state to grow volume and revenue. For instance, MCG has branch campuses around the state "where our physicians are being trained but we don’t have any kind of formal relationship with them," she said.

They could pursue strategies by joining together as a larger entity to negotiate with insurers or for group purchasing, for instance, Keefer said. MCG Dean David Hess and the university are pursuing a "3-plus" model for shortening medical schools to three years linked to a residency, some in primary care or other needed specialists in scare supply in rural areas.

Those residencies would be in Augusta but also potentially throughout the state. As those much-needed doctors go out to in some cases smaller rural facilities, along with much needed nurses and allied health professionals, "how might we partner with them not just to send them the professionals but work with them on their business model" and work together for mutual benefit, Keefer said.

Columbia County Hospital

Columbia County is the state’s largest and most populous county without its own hospital. The biggest hurdle has been the state’s Certificate of Need regulations, which require a new facility to show there is a certain unmet need for a hospital in the area, which was considered impossible because of the large number of hospital beds in neighboring Richmond County.

But late in 2013, Columbia County officials began exploring the possibility of using a rare exception to that need standard that allows a facility to be built if it is the sole facility and the country provides 20 percent of the funding. Three hospitals ultimately made a request to build one – AU Medical Center, Doctors Hospital of Augusta and University Hospital. The Georgia Department of Community Health chose AU Medical Center in November 2014 and Doctors and University appealed to the department to reverse the decision.

After those appeals were denied, Doctors has continued to pursue appeals and lawsuits over the decision and then the department’s use of the exception. If allowed , AUMC would build a $150 million, 100-bed facility in Grovetown with a Level II trauma center and Columbia County would pay $30 million as its share of the project.