Franklin hospital may move to richer spot

Proposed move would mean a longer trip for most of Franklin County's elderly and poor residents

Critics of a for-profit Franklin County hospital's plan to move near the border of affluent Wake County are dismayed that a subsidiary of the taxpayer-supported UNC Health Care system is helping to do it.

Health advocates and residents are angry the $103.9 million Franklin Regional Medical Center project, in which UNC's Rex Healthcare is a partner, would move the county's only hospital farther from its poorest and oldest residents. They say the relocation runs counter to UNC's mission to provide health care to all.

"I'm baffled by the UNC involvement," said Adam Searing, project director for the N.C. Health Access Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for the poor and uninsured. "How does UNC's public mission square with the for-profit shareholders that own that hospital? Those shareholders are there to make money. UNC is there to serve the people."

In November, Rex Healthcare in Raleigh, a wholly owned subsidiary of UNC, announced it would join with Franklin Regional Medical Center's for-profit owner, Health Management Associates of Naples, Fla., to build a hospital in Youngsville. That's 12 miles southeast of its current location in Louisburg and a short distance from affluent communities such as Wakefield in northern Wake County.

Both opponents and supporters of the project will speak out this afternoon at a hearing in Louisburg. The hearing is the last chance for the public to weigh in before state regulators decide whether the facility would be needed and fair to the patients it is to serve. A decision on whether the project can proceed is expected in April.

While Rex makes its own business decisions, it does so under the banner of UNC, which was founded to serve all North Carolinians regardless of ability to pay. Health Management Associates, which is one of the nation's largest for-profit hospital companies, this fall said it would begin asking uninsured patients to sign promissory notes -- a legal obligation to pay -- before leaving the hospital.

"We expected HMA to do this," said Boyd Sturges, a Louisburg town councilman, lawyer and outspoken critic of the relocation proposal. "We were frankly stunned that UNC and Rex would want to put their names on such an endeavor."

Rex stands by move

Rex officials say critics exaggerate the harm of moving the hospital. They say the venture -- which would establish a new urgent care center in Louisburg and a primary care practice in eastern Franklin County -- might improve access to care. Rex has pledged to use its good name to help recruit specialists and primary care doctors to Franklin County, where practitioners are in short supply.

"We think it absolutely addresses the community need," Lisa Schiller, a Rex Healthcare spokeswoman said of the joint proposal unanimously approved by the governing boards of both Rex and UNC. Orage Quarles III, publisher of The News & Observer, is on Rex's board of directors.

Rex's involvement helped HMA revive an earlier relocation bid that state regulators shot down in July. At that time, officials said the move would diminish care to residents in Franklin County's poorest, most rural reaches.

Residents' hopes, fears

Schiller said Rex and HMA surveyed Franklin County residents in late December. Most indicated they favored the new hospital site after learning that northern Franklin County would get the new urgent care center, a physician practice and as much as $250,000 in paid transportation to the new hospital in Youngsville.

Many residents, however, said they continue to doubt that an urgent care center would be appropriate for major medical crises.