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Anti-hospital group seeks to postpone public hearing
A group of Broadlands residents has asked the county's planning director, Julie Pastor, to postpone next week's scheduled Planning Commission public hearing on the proposed Broadlands Regional Medical Center.
Rhonda Paice, attorney for the Concerned Citizens of Broadlands, charges in a letter to Pastor that the disclosures of ownership in the application for the 164-bed hospital do not satisfy the requirements of a county ordinance.
A chart of the ownership disclosed in the application, included by Paice in her letter to Pastor, starts with Northern Virginia Community Hospital and descends through five more layers of ownership to a tier of 13 individuals – one is former Tennessee Sen. William Frist – and companies, including Bain Capital Integral Investors and Merrill Lynch Ventures LP 2001.
By failing to disclose ownership in more detail, Paice writes, the application does not meet the county's legal requirements.
"I and my clients feel the county should cancel the Oct. 15 public hearing until they get the disclosures right."
Van Armstrong, in the county's Planning Department, said late Oct. 10 that he had seen the letter (delivered to the county late Oct. 9) and he had referred it to Mark Looney, the attorney for the Broadlands Regional Medical Center application. Armstrong said he is waiting for Looney's response to the letter, specifically his level of comfort with the level of disclosure and the completeness of the application.
"The Concerned Citizens of Broadlands does not want this hospital in the Broadlands neighborhood," Paice said. "My goal is make everyone aware of who HCA [the parent corporation] is and what they really want to do. This disclosure does not get us there."
Mark Foust, with HCA, said "This action does not serve the community good,it only advances the cause of those who oppose BRMC for their own narrow self interest. The community deserves this application to go forward and to be heard because it wants and it needs this hospital to be built."
A Planning Commission public hearing on the hospital application was originally scheduled for Sept. 25. It was canceled and rescheduled for Oct. 15 when Paice brought to the attention of county administration that the legally required signs posted along Broadlands Boulevard directed citizens not to Eagle Ridge Middle School, the venue for the hearing, but to the County Government Building in Leesburg.
Other citizens groups prepared for the public hearing. The Broadlands Residents For BRMC, a self-described independent grassroots group of Broadlands residents that supports the hospital application,, held a press conference at the Broadlands Nature Center Oct. 10, and offered data that show, it said, that Inova Loudoun Hospital's fees are higher than those at HCA-owned Reston Hospital.
The same day, Loudoun Medical Group, one of the county's largest physician-owned practices, issued a statement urging that the next hospital be built not in Broadlands, but along U.S. 50.
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