How to find Georgia Certificate of Need filings
Where DCH publishes Certificate of Need records, what the weekly report contains, and how to get the documents that are not online.
Where does Georgia publish CON filings?
The DCH Office of Health Planning posts the current CON tracking report each week on its certificate of need pages. Only the current report is linked. Issues from 1996 to 2021 are in the Digital Library of Georgia, for example the report for June 20 to 26, 2018. Decision letters, applications and staff evaluations are in the DCH online repository.
What does each document tell you?
The tracking report lists each letter of intent with its number, applicant, project, received date, application due date, site, county and estimated cost. Each application entry gives the filed, deemed complete, review and decision deadline dates, the estimated cost, a contact and whether opposition was filed. Decisions stay on the recently approved or denied lists for a few weeks. The appealed projects section names the appellants and intervenors and follows each case through the hearing officer, the Commissioner and the courts. The DCH evaluation in the repository gives the rules met and not met, the indigent and charity care commitment and the decision.
Why is it hard to follow a request from start to finish?
DCH removes past reports from its site, so a project's history has to be pieced together from many weekly issues held in different places. No public copy was found for the weeks from November 2022 to June 2023. The repository is closed to automated reading, and its documents are named by year and project number (for example CON2021044 Decision), so they must be looked up one at a time. DCH also skips project numbers it never lists, and the reports do not say why.
How do I get records that are not online?
Use the Health Planning/Certificate of Need Open Records Request Form linked from the DCH CON page. Name the project numbers, or the weeks of tracking reports you need. A decision letter or evaluation can also be found by hand in the repository by searching its document name.
Is there other public data that helps?
The Georgia Court of Appeals docket gives the case number, trial court, judgment and date for CON appeals that went that far; superior court orders are held by the county clerks and are not online. HB 186 (2019) raised the capital and equipment thresholds, and HB 1339 (effective July 1, 2024) exempted renovations, many imaging purchases, inpatient psychiatric programs and other projects, so filings fell from 55 in 2023 to 19 in 2024.
Where does COPN Atlas fit?
COPN Atlas joins the weekly reports into one row per project number: 546 Georgia projects decided, withdrawn or pending from January 2016 to October 27, 2026. 415 were approved, 67 denied and 32 withdrawn, and 5 are pending. Each row carries its filing and review dates, estimated cost, site, opposition flag and the letter of intent behind it; the 74 appealed projects show every step and the final result. The file adds 618 letters of intent. See what is in the Georgia file.
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