Gov. John Bel Edwards said today he has asked Baton Rouge General Health System administrators to consider reopening their Mid City campus’ emergency room, because he feels the hospital’s business model will be different with Medicaid expansion.
“I believe the Medicaid expansion affords them an opportunity to do that because they will have fewer people accessing services in the emergency room without reimbursement associated with that,” Edwards told reporters after his speech at the Louisiana Health Summit held at Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
Edwards said he had discussions with General administrators when they were talking to Ochsner Health System, of New Orleans, about a partnership involving both medical institutions.
The governor said he was working to get an emergency room in north Baton Rouge. If General Health System is unable to reopen the Mid City emergency room, Edwards said, “we’re going to find some other way.”
Talk about the closure of the Mid City ER surfaced when Edwards told the more than 250 health care advocates, workers and insurers, present during the Medicaid expansion session, that rural hospitals were closing in Southern states that turned down federal Medicaid expansion dollars.
“Don’t think that wouldn’t happen in Louisiana had we not expanded Medicaid, because it would,” Edwards said. “And in fact, we have a hospital—it’s not a rural hospital—right here in Baton Rouge, the Mid City campus of Baton Rouge General, closed its emergency room because too many people were visiting that emergency room without reimbursement dollars going to the hospital.”
Edwards added that situation would play out repeatedly in the state without the federal Medicaid expansion dollars.
General Health System closed the Mid City ER nearly one year ago, on March 31, in response to mounting financial losses. The system plans to convert the hospital to a specialty care facility.
In an interview with Daily Report last week, General Health System/Baton Rouge General President and CEO Mark Slyter says hospital officials have a study that showed emergency medical care was not a top priority for that area of north Baton Rouge.
“There is no question there are some additional services we can continue to work on, particularly for that north Baton Rouge area; however, some of the things being proposed may not have the impact that folks are talking about,” Slyter says. He also noted the proliferation of urgent care clinics popping up in Mid City. He says the clinics provide the more appropriate level of care needed for many of the maladies for which people previously sought care at the Mid City facility.
During his 20-minute speech, Edwards outlined the need for Medicaid expansion in Louisiana. He said it is estimated that more than 300,000 people will be enrolled in Medicaid when the expansion goes into effect July 1.
Among those 300,000 eligible residents, about 30,000 would be restaurant workers and 15,000 would work in construction, Edwards said, highlighting that many who would be covered are working-class residents. Those residents, he said, often are caught in the trap of making too much to be covered under Medicaid but not enough to afford insurance on their own.
Edwards signed an executive order on Jan. 12, his second day in office, to expand Medicaid after his predecessor, former Gov. Bobby Jindal, refused to grant the expansion through the Affordable Care Act.
—Ryan Broussard
