By Kathy Chaffin
kchaffin@salisburypost.com
Rowan Regional Medical Center and Carolinas Medical Center-NorthEast submitted competing certificate of need applications to the state Monday to offer a new fixed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner in Rowan County.
Monday was the deadline for applications for the additional MRI included for Rowan in the 2009 N.C. State Medical Facilities Plan. The beginning review date for both applications submitted to the Certificate of Need Section of the N.C. Division of Health Service Regulation is April 1, according to the state plan.
The application submitted by Rowan Regional, a Novant Health facility, calls for adding a MRI scanner at its outpatient center on Julian Road. More information on Rowan Regional’s application was not available Tuesday evening.
CMC-NorthEast, a Carolinas HealthCare facility located in Concord, proposed in its application locating the MRI scanner in a Southern Piedmont Imaging center to be located in the Pinnacle Office Park at 455 Jake Alexander Blvd.
The Rowan fixed MRI scanner is among only 10 approved to be added in North Carolina this year.
CMC-NorthEast’s application calls for 3,200 square feet of new construction and a total estimated cost of $4,049,122. The projected opening date would be Jan. 1, 2011.
Scott White, spokesman for Carolinas HealthCare, said the MRI is a strong diagnostic device that will be very helpful to physicians and patients in Rowan County. “We hope that there will be support from local physicians and citizens for this,” he said.
The Southern Piedmont Imaging center proposed in NorthEast’s certificate of need application is separate from the one proposed in a 2008 application for a $3.4 million diagnostic imaging center in the same Pinnacle Office Park.
The application was denied by the Certificate of Need Section, but White said CMC-NorthEast has filed an appeal to that decision.
More than 100 people turned out for a Nov. 10, 2008, public hearing on the proposed diagnostic center, about three-fourths of them in opposition.Also filed with the Certificate of Need Section Monday was an application by Novant Health to build a second operating room at Presbyterian Same Day Surgery in Monroe in Union County.
Carolinas HealthCare filed two additional certificate of need applications Monday. The first was to add a second operating room at an Ambulatory Surgery Center in Indian Trail. CMC-Union was previously granted a certificate of need for one operating room, but construction was delayed due to a county moratorium on sewer additions.
The second application submitted by Carolinas HealthCare was for a dedicated Caesarean section operating room at the current CMC-Lincoln main campus. The C-Section room would be relocated to the new facility upon completion of construction.
Contact Kathy Chaffin at 704-797-4249.