Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 1, 1995 TAG: 9503010051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DeBoer, D-Petersburg, citing a New Year's Eve fire at Southside Regional Medical Center in Petersburg that killed five people, sponsored a bill to require all hospitals in Virginia to install fire prevention sprinkler systems in patient areas by 1998.
The legislature debated and approved the bill Saturday, but not before Sen. Virgil Goode, D-Rocky Mount, was successful in securing an exemption for two hospitals in his district - Memorial Hospital in Martinsville and R.J. Reynolds Memorial Hospital in Patrick County.
Those two facilities won't have to comply with the requirement until 2003 if Gov. George Allen signs the bill into law.
Goode said he offered his amendment after administrators from the two hospitals asked him to do so.
Alan Adkins, administrator of R.J. Reynolds, and Joseph Roach, executive director of Memorial Hospital in Martinsville, said Monday that water supplies in their localities cannot support comprehensive sprinkler system improvements.
While not downplaying the importance of patient safety, both said the price tag for improvements - estimated at close to $600,000 at each hospital - would have meant increased costs to patients.
Adkins said R.J. Reynolds, a one-story hospital with a 77-bed capacity, has an alarm system that's been approved by local fire officials. And part of the hospital already was exempted from an earlier state regulation calling for sprinkler systems to be part of any new hospital construction or renovation, he said.
By 2003, the hospital either will be equipped with a sprinkler system throughout or its alarm system will be upgraded, Adkins said.
"But the exemption gives us some time to make a decision," he said.
At the 260-bed, multistory Martinsville hospital, Roach said all the patient rooms have sprinklers, but not the entire building.
Memorial completed a $750,000 improvement of its fire detection system last year.
"We want to work with the city to improve the water supply, but we want to control the time line," Roach said.
As with many state hospitals, R.J. Reynolds and Memorial were built in stages. With sprinklers being required by state law after 1975, almost all hospitals in Virginia are partially equipped with the systems, said Katherine Webb, senior vice president for the Virginia Hospital Association.
The hospital association worked with DeBoer to draft the legislation, she said.
DeBoer made the bill a high priority. His grandmother was a patient at Southside Medical Center in Petersburg, and died 12 hours before the Dec. 31 fire broke out. Her room was four doors away from where the fire started, a release from DeBoer's legislative office said.
Southside has announced that it will equip patient areas with sprinklers prior to the anticipated implementation of the bill.
DeBoer said he agreed to Goode's amendment rather than having the bill tabled for a year or killed altogether.
But that didn't stop him from speaking out against the amendment before a vote was taken Saturday.
"How can one collect the high price it costs to stay in a hospital and then tell a patient that his room isn't as safe as it should be?," DeBoer said.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1995
by CNB