Hеalthmaster Home Health Care of Georgia, Inc., and its parent corporation, Healthmaster, Inc. (hereafter referred to together as Healthmaster) petitioned thе State Health Planning Agency (SHPA) for a declaratory ruling as to whether three “home health agencies” which it (Healthmaster) had acquired were currently authorized under the State Health Planning and Development Act, OCGA § 31-6-1 et seq., to provide home health services in certain specified counties, without the necessity of obtaining a certificate of need pursuant to OCGA § 31-7-155. The SHPA determined that the acquired firms had “grandfather” rights in some, but not all, of the counties in question. Chattahoochee Valley Home Health Care, Inc. (Chattahoochee), a competitor home health care agency providing services in the same counties in which Healthmaster was granted grandfather status, applied to the Superior Court of Muscоgee County for judicial review of this ruling pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). See OCGA § 50-13-19. The superior court denied a joint motion by Healthmaster and the SHPA to dismiss the action and affirmed the SHPA’s declaratory ruling. The case is now before us pursuant to our grant of Chattahoochee’s application for a discretionary appeal. Healthmaster and the SHPA have filed cross-appeals, contending that the lower court erred in denying their motion to dismiss. Held:
1. We first address the issue of Chattahoochee’s standing to sue. In support of their joint motion to dismiss, Hеalthmaster and the SHPA contended that Chattahoochee was not an aggrieved person with standing to obtain judicial review of the SHPA’s decision pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Aсt and that Chattahoochee was, in any event, estopped from seeking such review because it had itself been doing business pursuant to the same grandfather status it sought to deny Healthmаster.
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(a) Under the APA, any person “aggrieved by a fined decision in a ontested case” may obtain judicial review of that decision. “In the untext of the Administrative Practice Act, the word ‘aggriеved’ has >een interpreted to mean that the person seeking to appeal must how that he has an interest in the agency decision that has been pecially and adversely affected thereby,”
Ga. Power Co. v. Campaign or a Prosperous Ga.,
Construing analogous federal statutory law, the United States supreme Court has long recognized that one who suffers or will suffer ¡conomic injury as the result of an administrativе decision may be ¡onsidered aggrieved for purposes of obtaining judicial review of the lecision. See
Assn. of Data Processing Svc. &c. v. Camp,
Relying on
Diversified Health Mgmt. Svcs. v. Visiting Nurses Assn.,
(b) We reject Healthmaster’s contention that Chattahоochee was estopped from seeking judicial review of the SHPA’s decision because it was operating in the affected areas under the authority of the same grandfather status which it sought to deny to the firms acquired by Healthmaster. Chattahoochee’s authority to service the areas in question is not at issue in this proceeding, and there is no evidence uрon which a resolution of that issue could be made one way or the other. If, in fact, Chattahoochee’s operations are also in violation of the Act, the apprоpriate remedy is not to sanction a similar violation by Healthmaster but to redress the alleged violation by Chattahoochee in a separate proceeding brought for thаt purpose. See Executive Comm. of Baptist &c. of Ga. v. Metro Ambulance Svcs., supra. The superior court did not err in declining to dismiss the appeal, either on the basis that Chattahoochee lacked standing to seek review of the SHPA’s decision or on the ground that it was estopped from doing so.
2. Pursuant to OCGA § 31-7-155, a home health care agency is required to obtain a certificate of need prior to “initiating service or extending the range of its service area.” However, that requirement is qualified by the following language: “All home health agencies which were delivering services prior to July 1, 1979, and were certified for рarticipation in either Title XVIII or Title XIX of the federal Social Security Act prior to such date shall be exempt from a certificate of need, except in those instances where expansion of services or service areas is requested by such home health agencies.” Id. (Emphasis supplied.)
Although it is undisputed that the agencies acquired by Healthmаster had not been servicing the geographic areas at issue prior to July 1, 1979, the SHPA determined that those agencies had nevertheless acquired grandfather status in these areas because these *45 agencies would have been providing services there prior to the effective date of the Act had it not been for misdirection on the part of certain employees of the Department of Human Resources (DHR). Chattahoochee contends that this determination was not authorized by the language of the statute, which exempts from the certificate оf need requirement only those home health care agencies which were actually delivering services in a given service area prior to July 1, 1979.
Generally speaking, “ ‘[t]he administrаtive interpretation of a statute by an administrative agency which has the duty of enforcing or administering it is to be given great weight.’ ”
City of LaGrange v. Ga. Power Co.,
supra at 63. However, “where the language of an Act is plаin and unequivocal, judicial [or administrative] construction is not only unnecessary but is forbidden.”
City of Jesup v. Bennett,
3. The remaining enumerations of error are rendered moot by the foregoing.
Judgment reversed.