Georgia Streamlines CON Law, Opens Door for General Surgery ASCs

A bill that makes Georgia's certificate of need process less cumbersome and redefines general surgery as a "single specialty" was signed by the governor April 9. The law takes effect July 1.

The single-specialty designation means that general surgeons can open single-specialty ASCs without first gaining state approval.

Any new institutional health service will be required to obtain a CON. Among the new institutional health services named by SB433:

1. The construction, development, or other establishment of a new healthcare facility;

2. any expenditure by or on behalf of a healthcare facility in excess of $2,5 million;

3. the purchase or lease by or on behalf of a healthcare facility or a diagnostic, treatment, or rehabilitation center of diagnostic or therapeutic equipment with a value in excess of $1 million;

4. any increase in the bed capacity of a healthcare facility;

5. addition of clinical health services -- radiation therapy, biliary lithotripsy, surgery in an OR environment and cardiac catheterization -- that were not offered regularly through the facility within the 12 month period before the time the services would be offered; and

6. conversion or upgrading of a facility (i.e., "of any general acute care hospital to a specialty hospital").

Already-operating ASCs do not have to seek a CON to continue to provide current services. Going forward, however, the law provides that ASCs will have to "provide annual reports in accordance with Code Section 31-6-70."

An ASC will also have to provide care to Medicaid beneficiaries and, if already providing services to children, to PeachCare for Kids beneficiaries; it will also have to provide uncompensated indigent and charity care equal to or greater than 2 percent of its gross adjusted revenue. An ASC that makes a capital expenditure of more than $800,000 over a two-year period, builds a new OR or relocates, that figure will be at least 4 percent of gross adjusted revenues.

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