House Health Committee hears hours of testimony on SB 367 to ease certificate-of-need rules for cancer services

The House Health Committee heard more than an hour of testimony on Senate Bill 367 on Wednesday as proponents urged the committee to remove certificate-of-need (CON) restrictions that they say delay access to cancer diagnostics and outpatient oncology services. Hospital groups, safety-net advocates and some clinicians warned the change could weaken quality standards and threaten rural providers.

Senate supporters of the measure framed it as a modernizing reform meant to shorten wait times and expand outpatient procedures, diagnoses and trials for cancer patients across Georgia. The bill’s author described examples in which repeal of CON provisions previously reduced wait times for PET scans from weeks to days, allowing earlier diagnosis and faster treatment starts.

Proponents included independent and academic cancer centers. 'We were fed up with the wait times for patients, amounting 3 or 4 weeks to get a diagnosis of cancer,' said the president of UCBC (identified in the transcript as 'Doctor Nick'), who described building an independent research and treatment program in Athens with more than 100 clinical trials. Emory Winship Cancer Institute’s executive director, Dr. Suresh Amalingam, told the committee that cancer incidence has risen and that CON regulations now hinder rapid adoption and delivery of care.

Several witnesses urged caution for pediatric cancer care. A physician leader from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (identified as Doctor Graham in the transcript) said pediatric care differs from adult oncology, argued that pediatric programs rely on concentration of specialists and clinical volume for trials and escalation of care, and said Children’s opposed the bill for pediatric patients. 'We are against it for children, because we think that it would allow us to lose some of the specialists that we have,' the witness said.

Hospital and rural-hospital representatives, including Monte Veazey of the Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals and Anna Adams of the Georgia Hospital Association, opposed the bill’s current scope. They argued ambulatory surgery centers and exempt facilities can pick profitable cases, leaving hospitals to treat Medicaid and indigent patients; they also flagged private-equity ownership and enforcement gaps at the Department of Community Health. Georgia Alliance counsel urged waiting for technical advisory committees convened by the department to recommend modernized standards.

Committee members pressed witnesses on narrower alternatives — for example, limiting relief to equipment upgrades at existing facilities rather than allowing entirely new outpatient facilities — and on guardrails to protect safety-net hospitals. Hospital counsel suggested geographic tethering, workforce safeguards and indigent-care requirements as potential mitigations.

Senator supporters noted a compromise already in the bill that exempts about 10 sole-community hospitals and preserves a 35-mile protection zone for facilities that currently provide oncology services; supporters also argued states that moved away from CON have not seen hospital closures and that rescinding CON helped Georgia secure larger federal funding in a recent package. The transcript ends with the senator’s closing remarks and committee adjournment; no committee vote on SB 367 is recorded in the provided excerpt.