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| Lobbyist fighting for KVC project |
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By Tom Marshall
Senior Advocate writer
KVC Behavioral Healthcare is utilizing a lobbyist to fight in Frankfort to help keep a proposed Mt. Sterling project alive.
Shannon Smith, a career lobbyist from Lexington and originally from eastern Kentucky, has been at the Capitol urging lawmakers to defeat two bills that would prevent KVC from applying for a Certificate of Need to operate a 50-bed psychiatric facility for youths in the former Mt. Sterling High School building.
Children in need of such care are generally sent out of state presently.
“This issue is first and foremost about our responsibility to care for the children of Kentucky in Kentucky,” Smith said. “This is also about economic development. In a chronically underserved area of Kentucky this project would create 100 construction jobs and more than 120 permanent jobs. It also transforms a dilapidated building, albeit with a rich history within the community, into a place of safety and solace for children to come to for peace and healing.”
There are currently two bills before the Legislature, SB 55 sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Tori and HB 66 sponsored by Rep. Tom Burch, that would prevent KVC from applying for a CON.
Tori’s bill was approved by the Senate 20-18, but still has to pass through the House, where it is currently assigned to a committee. If approved by the committee it would come to a full House vote.
Burch told the Advocate previously that KVC isn’t entitled to special treatment and that he isn’t convinced KVC can find enough specially trained staff to successfully operate such a facility here.
Smith is trying to convince legislators that the bills hurt Kentucky.
Montgomery County’s two representatives in the Legislature, Rep. Richard Henderson and Sen. R.J. Palmer, are both opposed to the bills.
Smith said Palmer gave an impassioned floor speech in the Senate in which he argued that it is unfair to send these children with psychological problems out of state away from their families.
Henderson called the proposed legislation an attack on Mt. Sterling, which would gain jobs and economic growth as result of KVC locating here.
“I’m opposed to anything that hurts Mt. Sterling and this is detrimental to Mt. Sterling,” he said.
Henderson claims the bills are nothing more than special interest legislation proposed by the Kentucky Hospital Association, whose members stand to profit by blocking KVC in Mt. Sterling.
KVC announced last year that it planned to open a facility in Mt. Sterling.
As part of the plan, the old high school was to be renovated and leased to KVC through a company owned by Daren Turner, a Lexington developer who had previously renovated the Gateway Children’s Services building downtown.
KVC was interested in serving eastern Kentucky because 46 percent of the children currently in out-of-home care reside from the I-75 corridor east before their out of state placement, Smith said.
A regulation was then written by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to allow a provision of the CON to be given to any hospital willing to apply for a CON under a “no eject/no reject” clause for a non-substantive review of a CON for a hospital of up to 50 beds and with a maximum of one hospital per area development district, Smith explained.
The “no eject/no reject” clause, she explained further, means that no child referred by the cabinet will be denied admission, if there is an open bed or discharged to another hospital.
She said the hospital association responded with a campaign to stop anyone from applying for a CON under this non-substantive review process.
Under a substantive review one must prove the need for that service and the ability to provide that service. A non-sub review requires proof of the ability to provide service, Smith explained.
“With more than 200 children in out-of-state care, costing the state over $17 annually, the proof exists that a special category of ‘children’s psych beds’ needs to be created,” Smith said. “The state’s CON does not currently have a ‘children’s psych bed’ category, therefore making it impossible for a new hospital to apply for any beds under the current bed/need formula. The regulation allows for an exemption in the CON application that would create this new category of ‘children psych beds.’”
Smith said the Legislature has approved multiple bills in the past that allow for exemptions in the CON process.
The regulation affecting KVC went before the Administrative and Regulation Committee and was ruled deficient in September. It was then ruled deficient again before the Interim Health and Welfare Committee.
Smith said the cabinet asked the Health and Welfare Committee to pass the regulation “because the need for children’s psych beds is so great.”
Gov. Steve Beshear then intervened by overruling the committee’s finding. That created a dispute between the Legislature and the governor and prompted filing of the legislation currently under consideration.
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