How the North Carolina file is built
Every value comes from a page or PDF published by the Healthcare Planning and Certificate of Need Section of the NC DHHS Division of Health Service Regulation (DHSR), or from an Internet Archive copy of one. Every row names its source.
Sources
The decision tables, current year and yearly archives back to 2016, give the county, project ID, facility, decision and date, with links to the decision letter and the findings. Decision letters give the approved capital expenditure, the last date to appeal and the conditions; on approvals, the certificate holder in condition 1 is the applicant. The application logs give the date received, proposed capital expenditure, fee, review cycle, HSA and competitive flag.
Agency findings
North Carolina has no staff recommendation step. The CON Section decides each application, and its Required State Agency Findings are the closest match to a Virginia staff report. All 1,375 findings files were read for the findings date, the analyst, the need determination and the call on each review criterion; 150 rows list the criteria found nonconforming. In a competitive review one findings document covers every applicant, so the competing requests column lists the other project IDs in it.
History and archive copies
Rows are matched by project ID across the table, letter, log and findings. DHSR's links to the 2016 to January 2019 application logs and the 2016 to 2019 appeals reports are dead. 54 of those 63 files were recovered from the Internet Archive, and the log link on those rows points to the archive copy.
Comments, hearings and appeals
Written comments name the commenter and date on 457 rows. Public hearing reports from February 2019 give the scheduled hearing. Appeals filed reports mark 214 appealed rows, and 19 Court of Appeals and Supreme Court opinions give the outcome on 31 of them. Outside research from news and health system pages covers 9 rows, dated and linked.
Records requests
DHSR answered records requests by email in October 2026. Its letters settled three rows where the table and the letter disagreed, and it named seven applications that never went into review. Copies of those letters are hosted at copnatlas.com/sources/nc. Four older logs and three appeals reports are still due from DHSR.
Checks on every row
- Project ID matched across the decision table, decision letter, application log and findings
- Both values kept, with each source named, when documents disagree (57 rows carry one)
- Ten rows, one per application year from 2016 to 2025, checked by hand against the table, log line and letter
- Ten more rows checked against the findings text for the findings date and nonconforming calls
- Scanned letters read by OCR are marked, and the county and FID checks are skipped on them so misreads do not show as conflicts
What the file does not have yet
- 23 rows have outcome Unknown: they are on an application log but on no decision table, and DHSR posts no withdrawal list.
- Appeal outcomes are filled only where an appellate opinion exists. Administrative hearing decisions, settlements and withdrawals for most appealed rows are not in the file yet.
- Certificate numbers are blank, because the certificates issued reports were not read.
- Exemption, no-review and Qualified Urban Ambulatory Surgical Facility letters are outside the file, so surgery center activity in large counties after November 2023 is undercounted.
- North Carolina posts no letters of intent. The Pipeline tab holds the applications on the 2026 logs with no decision, and the logs name the facility, not the legal applicant.
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.