Florida Senate - 2016                                     SB 236
       
       
        
       By Senator Grimsley
       
       
       
       
       
       21-00333-16                                            2016236__
    1                        A bill to be entitled                      
    2         An act relating to certificates of need for rural
    3         hospitals; amending s. 395.6025, F.S.; revising the
    4         criteria for exempting a rural hospital or the not
    5         for-profit operator of rural hospitals from the
    6         requirement to obtain a certificate of need for the
    7         construction of a new or replacement facility within
    8         the primary service area; providing an effective date.
    9          
   10  Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Florida:
   11  
   12         Section 1. Section 395.6025, Florida Statutes, is amended
   13  to read:
   14         395.6025 Rural hospital replacement facilities.
   15  Notwithstanding the provisions of s. 408.036, a hospital defined
   16  as a statutory rural hospital in accordance with s. 395.602, or
   17  a not-for-profit operator of rural hospitals, is not required to
   18  obtain a certificate of need for the construction of a new
   19  hospital located in a county with a population of at least
   20  15,000 but no more than 18,000 and a density of less than 100 30
   21  persons per square mile, or a replacement facility, provided
   22  that the replacement, or new, facility is located within 10
   23  miles of the site of the currently licensed rural hospital and
   24  within the current primary service area. As used in this
   25  section, the term “service area” means the fewest number of zip
   26  codes that account for 75 percent of the hospital’s discharges
   27  for the most recent 5-year period, based on information
   28  available from the hospital inpatient discharge database in the
   29  Florida Center for Health Information and Policy Analysis at the
   30  Agency for Health Care Administration.
   31         Section 2. This act shall take effect July 1, 2016.