How to find Kentucky Certificate of Need filings
Where the Cabinet for Health and Family Services publishes Certificate of Need records, what each document contains, and how to get the ones that are not online.
Where does Kentucky publish CON filings?
The Division of Certificate of Need in the Cabinet's Office of Inspector General runs CON Online. A search with no filters returns every application record back to 1972, and each record links its scanned documents. The monthly Certificate of Need Newsletter is posted on the Division's certificate of need page, which now holds only the 2026 issues. The law is KRS 216B, with regulations at 900 KAR 5 and 6.
What does each document tell you?
The CON Online record gives the facility, legal name, contact, county, project, capital expenditure, review type, decision and date, and certificate number. The document list holds the application, completeness letters, hearing requests, notices of appearance, hearing orders, the decision letter and final order, the certificate and any withdrawal, revocation or court filings. The newsletter lists hearings with the hearing officer and case number, proposals scheduled for review with the decision date, applications received and actions taken.
Why is it hard to follow a request from start to finish?
The documents are scans, so their text has to be read by OCR. The Cabinet removed every newsletter before 2026 from its site. CON Online overwrites an approval with REVOKED when a CON is later revoked, and for a deferral it shows the rescheduled decision date. The cost on CON Online can differ from the newsletter and the final order, and the hearing officer named in the newsletter is not always the one who signs the order.
How do I get records that are not online?
Send a request under the Kentucky Open Records Act to the Division of Certificate of Need at CON@ky.gov. Name the CON numbers or the newsletter issues you want. Search engines still list some missing issues by file name (for example JULY2022.doc and OCT2022.doc), which helps the Division find them. Since 2021 the Act has limited requests to Kentucky residents and a few other groups, such as businesses based in Kentucky and news organizations, so an out-of-state requester may be refused or asked to show eligibility.
Is there other public data that helps?
Internet Archive copies hold most newsletter issues from 2015 to 2025. Appeals of CON decisions go to the Franklin Circuit Court and the Court of Appeals. The Division posts need calculations and the batching timetable on its certificate of need page, and the State Health Plan is at 900 KAR 5:020.
Where does COPN Atlas fit?
COPN Atlas joins CON Online, the decision scans and the newsletters into one row per CON number: 928 Kentucky applications received from January 2016 through October 28, 2026, plus applications received in 2015 and decided from 2016 on. 700 were approved, 55 disapproved and 129 withdrawn or deferred, and 19 are pending. 870 rows link the decision document, and contested rows show the hearing officer, case number and affected parties. The file adds 303 letters of intent from 2015 to 2017. See what is in the Kentucky file.
Reserve one of the five founding subscriptions
One subscription covers every state in the file. Nothing is due until the first file arrives in January 2027, and you can cancel before then at no cost.