TriStar Greenview Regional Hospital has the green light to establish a second location in Bowling Green, but the hospital’s leadership hasn’t yet revealed plans for building the proposed 72-bed facility in the Lovers Lane corridor.

The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services on March 31 issued a final order approving a certificate of need that will allow Greenview to move forward with a project expected to cost $350 million and potentially transform the local health care environment.

Originally applied for in April 2022, the CON would allow Greenview to build a 238,405-square-foot facility to be called TriStar Greenview Regional East Hospital on a 30-acre tract adjacent to the Greenview Surgery Center and Graves Gilbert Clinic offices at 484 Golden Autumn Way.

Its 72 beds would be transferred from the 211-bed Greenview hospital on Ashley Circle, meaning there would be no initial increase in the total number of beds operated by the affiliate of Nashville’s HCA Healthcare.

After a three-day hearing in February, Frankfort Administrative Hearing Officer Brian Baugh ruled in favor of Greenview’s plan to increase its presence in Bowling Green.

In a letter to Greenview CEO Mike Sherrod, Kentucky Inspector General Adam Mather said the final CON will be issued at the end of April “unless a request for reconsideration is filed or a judicial appeal is taken and issuance is enjoined by the court.”

Any appeal would most likely come from Commonwealth Health Corporation, which operates The Medical Center at Bowling Green and other health care facilities.

CHC has since 2018 successfully opposed Greenview’s efforts to establish a ground ambulance service to compete with Med Center Health’s Med Center EMS.

Med Center Health has also opposed Greenview’s efforts to establish a freestanding emergency department on the first floor of Graves Gilbert Clinic on Park Street, near the emergency department at The Medical Center. A CON hearing on that application has been scheduled for April 26-28.

No appeal of the Greenview East CON has yet been filed, but an email from Med Center Health management said: “We are considering options.”

Barring a successful appeal, Greenview appears poised to move forward with a plan that would transform both local health care and the burgeoning Lovers Lane corridor.

In its original CON application, Greenview laid out a rationale for building the second facility.

“In order to meet the future demands and needs of the service area population as it grows and ages, Greenview must address a number of significant plant deficiencies at its current hospital,” the application said.

The application points out that the existing Greenview facility was built in 1972, making it difficult to meet current requirements for certain services.

“There have been numerous recent changes in code requirements for hospital pharmacy and lab operations that are difficult to meet within an outdated facility,” according to the application.

Greenview recently invested $4.1 million to upgrade its cardiac catheterization suite. Other upgrades – and possibly some new services – could come with the new facility.

The CON hearing brought out that Greenview had a relatively low occupancy rate of 27.2% in the 2020 Kentucky hospital utilization and service report. Adding services, or resurrecting one (obstetrics) that the hospital dropped in 2006 could boost that occupancy rate, but nothing in Greenview’s CON application hints at additional services.

The application does point out that building the Greenview East hospital makes more sense financially than attempting to upgrade the existing hospital.

“The construction of a new hospital will … be less costly (and) construction can be accomplished more quickly and without interruption to … patient care,” the application narrative said.

The building project does have the blessing of a number of local physicians who submitted letters of support with Greenview’s CON application and from former Bowling Green Mayor Bruce Wilkerson.

Wilkerson wrote, “I fully support the approval of TriStar’s application to establish a state-of-the-art second hospital in a highly accessible and growing area of Warren County.”

The proposed new hospital’s estimated total cost includes $30 million for site acquisition and engineering, $227 million for construction and $59 million for equipment. A project schedule included in the application calls for construction to start in June 2024 and for completion in 2027.