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How the file is built
Outside the research column, every value comes from a document the Virginia Department of Health has published. Nothing is estimated. Every row names its source: a VDH PDF for 378 of the 608 rows, and VDH's request log for the rest.
Sources
Three kinds of document from the Division of Certificate of Public Need: the public notice for each request, the DCOPN staff report with its recommendation, and the Commissioner's case decision. Where one of those is missing, a field may come from the division's monthly report, and the source notes column says so.
Decision letters are posted under certificate numbers rather than request numbers. I match them to requests by hand, and that is most of the work.
Checks on every row
- Request number matched across notice, staff report and decision
- Applicant, location and planning district read from each document
- Capital cost taken from the notice, with the staff report figure kept where it differs
- Competing requests taken from the batch cycle and the joint staff report
- Each source link opened and confirmed before delivery
History back to 2016
The 477 requests before August 2024 come from VDH's own request log, which records the applicant, project, planning district, batch, LOI and application dates, competing requests, the regional agency and DCOPN recommendations, the certificate number, the decision date and the charity care condition. Capital cost and notice date are read from the public notice where VDH hosts one, which is most requests from 2020 on. History rows link to the staff report and decision where VDH hosts them, and are marked as history rows in the file.
Independent research
Pending requests and recent decisions are researched outside VDH: news coverage, health-system announcements, local government records and court filings. I paraphrase each finding and give it a date and a link to its source. Where nothing turns up, the row says so. Research on pending requests is refreshed with each monthly file.
When documents conflict
When two state documents give different values, the discrepancies column records both and the document each came from. As of October 27, 2026, 43 of 131 rows carry at least one. See examples.
Monthly updates
Each month's file adds requests filed since the last one, fills in staff reports and decisions as they post, and marks every changed row. The 27 pending requests are rechecked each cycle.
Limits
Full three-document detail starts with requests noticed in August 2024; earlier rows are history rows as described above, and the discrepancy check has not been run on them. Eleven recent request numbers have no public document I could find, and they are listed in the coverage notes that come with each file. The state's documents remain the official record. COPN Atlas is an independent research aid, not legal advice, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Virginia Department of Health.
Page last updated October 27, 2026.
Check the method against ten rows
The 10-row sample includes the discrepancy and source columns, so you can test any row against the state's PDFs.
No card and nothing due until January 2027. The sample arrives as an Excel file within one business day.