The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and several other area hospitals have announced their plans to deal with the pending closure of Baton Rouge General Hospital’s Mid City emergency room, scheduled for March 31.
In a release issued this morning, DHH unveiled several strategies designed to help fill the gap created by the closure of the Mid City ER, which treated some 45,000 mostly Medicaid or uninsured patients last year.
Among the measures: The LSU Health Baton Rouge urgent care clinic, which is located on North Foster Drive a mile and a half from the Mid City ER, will increase its hours of operation from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week, effective March 23. The clinic is also hiring additional staff.
Also, the LSU Health Baton Rouge North Campus Urgent Care Clinic, a 24-hour facility on Airline Highway near the former Earl K. Long charity hospital, is expanding hours for advanced diagnostic services, including CT and MRI.
Our Lady of the Lake also is expanding access at its other clinics around the city. Additional pediatric coverage is planned for the North Campus Urgent Care facility, and additional hours and same-day appointments have been added to pediatric clinics at the OLOL’s Goodwood location near Mid City.
Baton Rouge General announced earlier this month it would be closing its ER to stem mounting financial losses of as much as $2 million per month. Hospital officials have said the majority of patients who used the ER could have been treated at urgent or primary care clinics, which are much less costly to operate.
Still, DHH officials say local hospitals with emergency rooms—Our Lady of the Lake, Baton Rouge General’s Bluebonnet campus, Ochsner and Lane Regional Medical Center—are ramping up to care for the additional influx of patients. To that end, Lane and Ochsner are considering expanding their emergency departments as needed. Our Lady of the Lake recently completed a series of expansions to its ER that has increased its capacity, and Baton Rouge General is evaluating increasing the capacity of its Bluebonnet ER.
DHH Secretary Kathy Kliebert says besides working out the logistics to ensure patient demands are met, the department is working with providers and community groups to educate the public on where they can go for care and which types of facilities are most appropriate for their needs.
“We are working on strategies to reduce the nonemergency use of emergency rooms,” she says. “We will continue to meet with community leaders and stakeholders, and will aggressively begin work with the coalition to help inform the public on when, where and how to utilize health care access points in our community.”
