Ed Whitehouse stood alongside a state highway in rural Butts County, Georgia, and surveyed acres of rolling fields and forests near Interstate 75. Instead of farmland and trees, he envisioned a hospital. Whitehouse, a consultant for a local health care company that wants to build a hospital there with at least 150 beds, said the group could break ground within a year.
The idea, he said, is to provide medical services beyond those currently provided by Wellstar Sylvan Grove Medical Center, an aging, nonprofit "critical access" hospital that offers limited services, including emergency care, rehabilitation, wound care, and imaging. But it took a new law, pushed by the state's powerful Republican lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, to clear the way for construction. The land is partly owned by his father, Bill Jones, a successful businessman whose interest in developing a hospital in his home county drew attention from state Democrats and the hospital industry.
The situation has been portrayed as "this billionaire entrepreneur, Bill Jones, exploiting the legal system through his son, imposing his will on people and trying to cash in," Whitehouse said. "Nothing could be further from the truth." Woven through the drama in Butts County are arcane but consequential rules that require state approval for hospital construction and expansion.
The rules, used nearly nationwide until the 1980s, require potential builders to apply for permission for new projects. State officials evaluate need.