BALTIMORE — Opponents of Washington Adventist Hospital’s proposed move to White Oak attacked its plan Monday, calling it unnecessarily expensive and detrimental to Langley Park and Hyattsville residents.
Monday marked the first of what is expected to be six days of evidentiary hearings held at the Maryland Health Care Commission on Adventist’s application for a state certificate of need to move to White Oak.
The hospital says moving seven miles from Takoma Park to a larger site near the new Food and Drug Administration headquarters, where it can build a state-of-the art facility, would better serve the needs of suburban Maryland residents. The hospital hopes to be a centerpiece of Montgomery County’s planned Eastern County Science Center development.
Much of the cross examination of witnesses for Adventist centered on whether the hospital could simply renovate and expand on its current site, rather than move. Kurt Fischer, the attorney representing Laurel Regional and Montgomery General hospitals, presented Adventist President Joyce Portela with a long list of area hospitals that had renovated on site.
Called a “turn key” renovation, a new wing is built to replace old patient rooms and patients are moved in one day when the new beds are finished.
But Portela and other hospital officials and consultants insisted that Adventist’s case was different. Portela was an administrator at Shawnee Mission Medical Center in Kansas City where such a renovation was completed.
“Turn key for us is building 10 miles away from our hospital campus,” Portela said. “Frankly I don’t believe in [replacing] existing towers on hospital sites. It’s always more complicated than that.”
Opponents, which include Holy Cross Hospital, also tried to paint some witnesses as beneficiaries of Adventist’s move. For example, Ray Brower, vice president of architecture firm RTKL, testified for Adventist as an expert witness but Fischer noted his firm was consulting on the design of Adventist’s new hospital building.
Fischer also questioned Brower about Adventist’s move from an “underserved” urban area to a more suburban location. But Brower qualified Adventist, which serves some low-income areas like nearby Langley Park, Hyattsville and parts of Silver Spring, said “socio-economics doesn’t enter” into his definition of urban and suburban.
The hospital’s Takoma Park location would remain open after the move as an urgent care and primary care facility.
