Prompted by monthly operating losses in the area of $2 million, Baton Rouge General Medical Center announced Tuesday it will close the emergency room at its Mid City campus within the next 60 days.
It marks the second time in six months the hospital has made such an announcement. But unlike the threatened closure last summer—which was staved off when the state came through with $18 million to help cover the hospital’s cost of providing uncompensated care in the ER—this time state and hospital officials say the shutdown will be for real.
In an interview with Daily Report, Baton Rouge General CEO Mark Slyter says hospital officials thought they were close to reaching a deal with the state that would enable the ER to remain open.
“We had escalated our discussions with the state to come up with an answer, and I think we were coming close,” Slyter says. “But in the last month with everything that was happening with the state budget (which is facing a $1.6 billion shortfall), it just became more and more challenging, but we accept the difficulties they are facing.”
Slyter declines to says specifically what possible options hospital officials had presented to Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals or how much they were asking for. He also won’t say whether Baton Rouge General was pressing for changes to the state’s reimbursement structure, which gives Our Lady of the Lake the lion’s share of reimbursements for providing care for the poor while giving very little to Baton Rouge General and other providers.
Slyter would only say, “We had presented them with some options, but we exhausted all of those.”
Also this week, Business Report presented its annual Leadership Power Breakfast, at which a panel that included Louisiana Association of Business and Industry President Stephen Waguespack, LSU President F. King Alexander and Louisiana Chemical Association President Dan Borné warned that Louisiana’s budget crisis threatens to cripple years of growth and diversification in the state’s private sector while also derailing recent improvements made in higher education.
Here’s a rundown of other local stories making headlines in Daily Report this week:
• The LSU Alumni Association is stepping up its efforts to try to stave off looming budget cuts to higher education that could reach as high as $400 million. On Wednesday, the association launched a new website and grassroots effort, calling on all of Tiger Nation to contact their elected representatives and push for workable solutions to the budget crisis.
• Mayor Kip Holden predicts “serious legal battles” will ensue if some Metro Council members follow through with plans to try to reallocate some of the property tax dollars dedicated to the parish library system to fund a mental health facility. “They’re setting new precedent when you take the public’s money that was dedicated for purpose A and use it for what they want to use it for,” Holden says.
• Eight months into his job as planning director of East Baton Rouge Parish, Frank Duke told the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge this week that he’s ready to start making some “radical changes” to the city’s outdated zoning code that will include reorganizing, simplifying and clarifying the regulations and requirements in the code.
• Baton Rouge-based civil engineering firm SJB Group has added to its land surveying services a new subsurface utility engineering line, a move company officials say will help the firm continue to grow in the Capital Region. By adding the new service line, SJB will no longer have to subcontract with other firms when it needs to locate an underground utility line. That will not only save SJB time and money, but also its clients.
• An LSU graduate has parlayed the $3,000 in seed capital she won at last year’s LSU Student Incubator Venture Challenge into a new fitness business. Andrea Roberts, who was among five winners to receive a share of $25,000 in total prize money at the pitch competition, has launched a family-friendly fitness center called FamilyFit Athletics.
• The Ohio developer of University Edge apartments sold the complex at 650 W. McKinley St. for $32.5 million to an Illinois firm that specializes in student housing. Hallmark Student Housing Baton Rouge sold the two-year-old complex—which includes 474 beds in 158 units—to Scion BR Apartments, which owns and operates some 16,250 beds of university housing near 24 college campuses across the country.
• Led by Latter & Blum Inc. Chairman and CEO Robert Merrick, a group of New Orleans investors has acquired the office building at 4000 S. Sherwood Forest Blvd. for $8.15 million from a group of California investors. The 78,000-square-foot building is the eighth in the Baton Rouge market in which Merrick has acquired an ownership interest over the past 18 months, which he says speaks to the faith he has in the local office market.
• The owner of the vacant building at 2978 Government St. that for years was home to Southern Camera and Video hopes the property can be rezoned, a move that would make it easier for a restaurant to move into the space. Real estate developer Geordy Waters, who is marketing the property for longtime owner Joyce Mcintire, has filed an application with the Planning Commission to rezone the property from C1, or commercial, to CAB-1, which would allow for a full-service restaurant.
• Vivid Ink Graphics sold its former headquarters building at 11710 Cloverland Court for $930,000 to the owners of a Prairieville-based company that makes portable LED signs.
• A pair of new Family Dollar stores are planned in Baton Rouge following the recent sale of two tracts of land on Airline Highway and Greenwell Springs Road in separate deals, says Ben Graham of Sperry Van Ness/Graham, Langlois & Legendre. Construction at the stores—one of which will be at 6500 Airline Highway and the other at 9109 Greenwell Springs Road—will begin in about three to five months, with completion expected within a year, Graham says.
• Work will soon be getting underway on a downtown beautification project along Florida and Lafayette streets. The project, which is part of the Downtown Development District’s Riverfront Gateway Initiative, will have several components.
• The Baton Rouge Area Chamber has filed a request with the Planning Commission to rezone a 382-acre tract at 15696 Old Scenic Highway from agricultural/rural to industrial. The request is part of BRAC’s Certified Sites initiative, through which it identifies new development-ready sites in the Capital Region and increases the number of sites certified by Louisiana Economic Development that are available to economic development prospects.
• After serving as executive director of business development for the Baton Rouge Area Chamber for the past five years, Iain Vasey is moving on to Corpus Christi, Texas, where he will lead the city’s Regional Economic Development Corporation as president and CEO.
• Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who coordinated military relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina, told the Baton Rouge Press Club that he is still mulling whether he wants to run for governor in 2015.
• The Capital Area Transit System fired back at some union drivers who protested outside the main bus station on Florida Boulevard on Thursday, saying in a prepared statement that the drivers’ claims about unsafe buses and unfulfilled contracts are not true.
• The number of Louisiana workers who belong to a union rose by 28% in 2014, according to new figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. An estimated 96,000 Louisianans were union members in 2014, up from an estimated 75,000 in 2013, the report shows. Nonetheless, union workers accounted for just 5.2% of all employed.
