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Editorial: Prince George’s health care

Editorial: Prince George’s health care

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There is now — finally — hope for first-class medical care in Prince George’s County.

It has been far too long in coming, and the outcome is far from assured, but the prospects are bright after last week’s announcement by state and local officials.

Under the agreement cited last week, the highly regarded University of Maryland Medical System would take over and revamp the county’s struggling (financially and otherwise) health care network. In recent years the county and state have continued to pump money into the failing system as it slid closer and closer to the precipice of financial and medical failure.

Now comes a plan under which a regional teaching hospital would be built in Prince George’s County not only to serve the county’s nearly 900,000 residents but also the growing population of Southern Maryland.

Many critical details remain to be worked out. A new hospital estimated to cost $600 million will have to be built to replace the aging and outmoded Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly. It is not clear where the money to build that hospital will come from or where the new facility and its 100-acre campus will be located.

A solution would have to be found to address the $200 million debt of the current county system, now managed by Dimensions Healthcare. UMMS says it will not assume that debt, and it should not. UMMS will have its work cut out to operate the new health care system going forward, and it should not be saddled with another entity’s staggering debt.

All of these things and more need to be resolved before the plan can go forward. But with a new, reform-minded county executive now in office and more stable leadership on the Prince George’s County Council, conditions are much more favorable for a deal between the state and county.

Officials estimate it will take about 16 months to answer all of these questions. Then construction could start in 2014, and the hospital could open by 2017.

Maryland and Prince George’s County are clearly on the right track now regarding health care in that county. We applaud the state and local officials who have gotten things this far, as well as the leaders of UMMS for their willingness to take on this task. We urge all parties to continue working in that same spirit of cooperation to bring this project to a successful conclusion.

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