The health care industry has been in a state of flux for decades, as the rising cost and complexity of delivery services exerts pressure on providers, payers and patients alike.
But 2019 promises to be a year of some particularly dramatic changes in the local market, Business Report details in a new feature, where new payment models are gaining traction and the battle for insured patients is heating up.
The changes are already visible in a very physical sense. Just off Interstate 10 near Siegen Lane is Ochsner’s new medical complex. The $110 million facility just opened, and includes a 155,000-square-foot medical office building and clinic, and a 30,000-square-foot, 11-bed “microhospital” that will be able to perform general, ENT, orthopedic, gynecology and urology surgeries.
Just two miles away, also prominent from I-10, is Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center’s new Children’s Hospital, a $230 million facility with 80 inpatient beds and more than 350,000 square feet of patient care space that is under construction.
Though Baton Rouge is adding hospital beds at a time when the number of inpatient beds nationwide has decreased some 30% since 2017, the increase will not be as great as it may seem.
Baton Rouge was already a competitive—and, according to some health care analysts, overbedded—market to begin with. As Ochsner moves from the suburban periphery of the Capital Region into the heart of the health district with a major investment, the competition will only intensify. Read the full story about the changes happening in area health care.
