How the West Virginia file is built
Every value comes from a West Virginia Health Care Authority (HCA) record: its annual case-file reports, the case files and weekly newsletters in the DHHR public reading room, newspaper notices of letters of intent, or court records. Every row names its source.
Sources
The HCA's annual case-file reports for 2017 to 2022 give the applicant, file number, type of filing, receipt, deemed complete and decision dates, hearing request, project, capital expenditure and ruling. The 2021 and 2022 reports add the statutory findings made and the exemption subsection used. The 2020 and 2021 reports are scans, read cell by cell and checked by eye against the page images.
Reading room
The DHHR public reading room holds HCA case files and the weekly newsletter, Health Care Review. 578 newsletters from January 2016 to September 2026 and 463 CON decision documents were read for the ruling, conclusions of law and conditions. The 2016 and 2023 to 2026 rows come from there, since the HCA posted no annual report for those years.
What a row is
HCA file numbers cover CON applications, exemption applications, determinations of reviewability and letters of intent. The first three are rows, marked in a filing type column, so a reader can filter to CON applications. Letters of intent are on their own tab.
Matching and outside sources
Newsletter entries are matched to file numbers by serial number. Letters of intent come from HCA legal notices reposted on wvlegals.com and from the newsletter. Appealed rulings link the record on courtswv.gov. Outside reporting, such as the Clear Lines newsletter and news coverage, is dated and linked, and the row says when the HCA decision itself was not read.
Checks on every row
- File number matched across the annual report, newsletter, reading room index and court record
- Both values kept, with each source named, when documents disagree (23 rows carry one)
- Ten 2017 to 2022 rows checked by hand against the report pages, and ten reading room rows against the newsletter text
- 50 values on 13 rows from decisions and court records checked against the source text
- Capital expenditure never taken from a decision's text layer unless checked by eye against the page image
What the file does not have yet
- Findings and conditions on 400 rows come from the scans' text layer and have not been proofread.
- About 1,800 exemption and reviewability decisions are linked but not read; their outcome comes from the newsletter heading or the receipt letter.
- Opposing parties are named only on court record and Clear Lines rows; elsewhere the opposition documents are listed by type and date.
- 68 of the 245 rows for 2016 have no newsletter entry and carry only the reading room index.
- HCA analysts make recommendations to the Board, but the recommendation is not published, so there is no staff report column.
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