Hospitals engage in life-or-death contest.

• Author: Vora, Nirav
• Position: Tar Heel Tattler

Good Hope versus Betsy Johnson doesn't exactly evoke images of Ali versus Frazier. But the two Harnett County hospitals are entering the third year of a health-care fight, and neither shows signs of retreating. But then, neither can. They both consider it a case of life or death.

It started in 2002 when Good Hope Hospital, an Erwin nonprofit built in 1913, announced plans for a $34 million, 46-bed replacement hospital near Lillington. Plano, Texas-based Triad Hospitals, which operates about 50 for-profit hospitals nationally, would own 90% of it. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has said that Good Hope must replace or renovate its building by November 2006.

The problem is that Good Hope, like any Tar Heel hospital seeking to expand, move or add expensive equipment, must get a certificate of need from the state Division of Facility Services. The requirement is designed to keep medical costs down by preventing hospitals from duplicating services. Competing hospitals are allowed to weigh in, and 101-bed nonprofit Betsy Johnson Regional Hospital in Dunn hit Good Hope with a haymaker. A for-profit Good Hope, Betsy Johnson says, would court paying patients at the expense of the uninsured, who would become a drain on Betsy Johnson. The North Carolina Health Access Coalition, a Raleigh-based advocacy group, says that's what happened in Las Cruces, N.M., when Triad built a for-profit hospital there...