Hospital Corporation of America announced Friday that the company is going to pursue an expansion of its Reston Hospital Center, adding 152 beds to the 187-bed facility. The same day, HCA submitted a rezoning request for the property to the Fairfax County Department of Planning and Zoning.

The decision to expand the Reston hospital, located on a 15-acre campus adjacent to Reston Town Center, comes after the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors again denied HCA’s request for a special exception to build a 164-bed Broadlands Regional Medical Center in eastern Loudoun. HCA spokesman Mark Foust said the Reston hospital expansion would "fill the current void in health-care delivery in both Fairfax and eastern Loudoun County," serving patients who otherwise would have gone to the Broadlands hospital.

THE EXPANSION would add 345,000 square feet of hospital space to the 600,000-square-foot facility. A new six-story medical office building would be added to the three existing patient towers, the surgical suite and emergency department would be expanded and 650 parking spaces would be added. Depending on approvals from the state and county, the project could be underway in three to five years.

Foust said hospital resources across Northern Virginia and particularly in Loudoun, are inadequate, with Loudoun residents served by about half a hospital bed per 1,000 people. The national average, he said, is about three beds per 1,000 residents. Loudoun currently has only one hospital, the 183-bed Inova Loudoun Hospital.

HCA’s fight to build the Broadlands Regional Medical Center has been long and costly. The idea was first discussed in 2002 and the state granted HCA a certificate of public need (COPN) in 2004. The COPN was challenged by Inova, on the grounds that the site of the proposed medical center was only five miles from Inova Loudoun Hospital.

In 2005, Loudoun’s Board of Supervisors denied HCA’s request for a special exception and zoning modification to build the hospital, with the principal objection being that the hospital would be incongruous with the surrounding residential neighborhoods. HCA responded by suing the county, saying the board had acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" in denying the special exception after the supervisors had approved every other special exception that had come before them in the previous three years. The company dropped the suit in early 2008, when the new Board of Supervisors, consisting of four new members, decided to revisit the application. On Feb. 3, the board again denied the application.

MEANWHILE, Foust said, plans to expand Reston Hospital Center have been underway for about two years, although HCA had not planned to submit any applications for the expansion for another 10 years or so. Although HCA had not discussed the expansion with the Reston Town Center Association, Foust said, "We have been meeting with neighborhoods that abut the hospital and their feedback has been positive." He said outreach efforts would continue now that the plans were being accelerated.

The Broadlands hospital would have brought 600 jobs and $4 million in tax revenue to Loudoun County, according to HCA, and Foust said the Reston hospital expansion would bring similar benefits to Fairfax County, although the exact numbers had not yet been calculated.

Foust said HCA had not yet decided whether the company would try to transfer the current COPN to the Reston hospital or apply for a new certificate. The COPN must be renewed every year and it expires again in March.