How the District of Columbia file is built
Every value comes from a document the State Health Planning and Development Agency (SHPDA) at DC Health has published: its yearly decision tables, the case documents on its meeting portal and the monthly Report of the Director. Every row names its source.
Sources
SHPDA's yearly decision tables, one per year from 2016 to 2026, give the CON number, applicant, project, decision date and status. The meeting portal holds staff reports, decision letters and findings, letters of intent, completeness letters, hearing notices, transcripts and comment letters; 1,057 of them were read. The Report of the Director, monthly from February 2022, gives the application date, the expected Project Review Committee meeting and recent decisions.
Matching across documents
A case document is tied to a request by the registration number printed in it, in its file name or in the agenda item title. Some numbers are printed differently from one document to the next; those are merged under the number in the decision table and the variant is kept. A script checks that every linked document read in full prints the CON number or the applicant's name.
History and letters of intent
For 2016 to 2020, 130 of the 132 decided rows come from the decision tables alone, because the portal has only two published meetings before 2021. The Letters of intent tab has 119 letters: 42 from SHPDA's letters of intent library (2025 and 2026) and 77 from SHPDA's 2015 and 2016 logs, read from Internet Archive copies of doh.dc.gov.
Records request pending
A FOIA request went to the DC Health FOIA officer on October 28, 2026 for the 2016 to 2020 staff reports and decisions and for the letter of intent log back to 2016. Rows will be filled when the reply comes.
Appeals and outside research
Reconsiderations and appeals were read by hand from the Reports of the Director, hearing notices and transcripts; five matters had one. Outside research covers two requests and two pending matters, from Mayor's and Attorney General releases and news coverage, each dated and linked.
Checks on every row
- Registration number matched across the decision table, portal documents and Report of the Director
- Each linked document checked by script for the CON number or applicant name
- Both values kept, with each source named, when documents disagree (22 rows carry one)
- Ten rows checked by hand against their documents, and ten more for the decision letter columns
- Scanned text corrected only where checked against the page image
What the file does not have yet
- Rows from 2016 to 2020 have the decision and its date but no staff report, cost, filing date or conditions, because SHPDA posted almost no case documents for those years. The FOIA request asks for them.
- Filing dates exist for 97 rows, because the Report of the Director, the only public source for the application date, starts in February 2022.
- Project Review Committee and Statewide Health Coordinating Council votes are in the hearing transcripts and are not columns yet.
- Decisions after June 4, 2026 come from decision letters and the Report of the Director until SHPDA updates the 2026 table.
- Ward is stated in SHPDA documents for 12 rows only, so the file has no ward selector.
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