Baton Rouge General Medical Center’s Mid City campus has long served many patients who can’t afford to pay. When the state shut down Earl K. Long Medical Center, with charity care moving to Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center across town, many more such patients began to show up at the Mid City hospital’s emergency room.
Baton Rouge General Vice President Dionne Viator tells Business Report in a feature from the current issue that her hospital is losing about $1.5 million a month treating the uninsured. She says conversations about its issues with the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals elicited much understanding for the General’s plight but no financial help at first.
The state quickly changed its tune once the General’s board of directors decided “with heavy hearts” to shut down its Mid City emergency room. On the very day in late August that hospital officials were breaking the news to staffers, the state called to say that more than $7 million had been found to help the General keep its ER open.
“We felt like it was a significant access-to-care issue for the uninsured and lower-income families in that area,” says DHH Secretary Kathy Kliebert, who brushed aside questions about whether the near-closure represented hardball negotiating tactics by the General.
“The cash infusion, which totals about $18 million including federal matching funds, will keep the General’s Mid City ER open, at least in the short term,” according to the feature. “The arrangement highlights the intense competition over scarce public health care dollars and shows just how difficult it is to reform Louisiana’s disjointed, Frankenstein’s monster of a health care system.” Read the full feature. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
