By Healthcare Facilities Today

A federal appeals court recently boosted a legal challenge of a Virginia law restricting the installation of new medical facilities and equipment in the state — instructing a district court to reconsider whether the statute unconstitutionally inhibits interstate commerce, according to an article on The Washington Post's website.

The opinion partly reversed a lower court’s decision and questioned Virginia’s “certificate of public-need” law, which requires that medical companies seeking to build new facilities or install new medical equipment go through a lengthy and expensive process to prove the necessity of the new buildings or devices.

Although the judges did not find the law unconstitutional, they allowed a lawsuit against it to go forward and told a lower court, which had earlier tossed the suit, to examine, in particular, possible “significant, deleterious effects on interstate commerce,” according to the article.

“The bureaucratic red tape foisted upon businesses by the program may well be so cumbersome that, as a functional matter, it imposes a major burden on interstate commerce and discourages out-of-state firms from offering important medical services in Virginia,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote in the opinion.

A lawyer for Delaware-based Colon Health Centers of America and Maryland-based Progressive Radiology — whose lawsuit had challenged the law — hailed the appeals court’s ruling as “definitely a win for our clients and for patients really all across Virginia,” the article said. A spokesman for the Virginia attorney general’s office said the state will defend the statute in future proceedings.

Read the article.