Inova funds HCA opposition
By Shannon Sollinger
Inova Loudoun Hospital has given $20,000 to the Concerned Citizens of Broadlands to support that group's opposition to putting a competing hospital on Broadlands Boulevard.
Mark Foust, spokesman for HCA, which has applied to build the Broadlands Regional Medical Center, said, "We continue to talk and listen to Broadlands residents, and we've found they support BRMC by about a 4-to-1 margin. Funded opposition to the hospital doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of people in Loudoun County want BRMC to be built in Ashburn – and built now."
The citizens group opposes the application of HCA, the country's largest for-profit hospital business, to build a 164-bed hospital on Broadlands Boulevard just west of the public schools administration building.
The Board of Supervisors in August 2005 turned down an HCA application to build a hospital there. HCA sued in Circuit Court, and in March 2008, a new Board of Supervisors agreed to look at another application in return for HCA's dropping the lawsuit working its way through the county's Planning Department.
Inova Loudoun Hospital has opposed HCA's application to build five miles from its front door in Lansdowne since the plan first surfaced in 2002. The state Health Commissioner approved the project.
Inova Loudoun Hospital Chief Operating Officer Susan Carroll said, in a statement, "When the Concerned Citizens of Broadlands asked us for support, we were happy to help. It is unfortunate that a goliath [sic] like HCA, a Tennessee-based for-profit company owned by Wall Street investors, forces ordinary citizens into a costly defense of their homes through unrelenting pursuit of an unwelcomed upzoning that ultimately harms the long-term County Plan for healthcare for all Loudoun citizens."
Several supervisors have said they would support a second hospital in the U.S. 50 corridor in the Dulles District, regardless of who makes the application. Both HCA and Inova own land there and are in the process of securing approvals for a hospital.