It’s official: Champion Medical Center at Howell Place is closed, a Louisiana Department of Health spokesman says.
Bob Johannessen, the agency’s communications director, says Champion ceased providing inpatient and outpatient services on July 13—the same day Daily Report broke news that Champion executives told state officials they would shutter the north Baton Rouge specialty hospital.
Johannessen says the information about the cessation of services was included in a hospital closure package Champion executives emailed to state officials last Wednesday. That package included a cover letter— dated July 14—which said the hospital’s effective date of closure would be Aug. 13.
But under hospital licensing standards, a hospital’s closure is effective on the date on which it stops providing services to the community, Johannessen says. Champion execs had to provide a 30-day written notice of the pending closure to LDH.
Champion Medical Center had been in operation at Howell Place for less than four years. Last year, some north Baton Rouge elected officials and community advocates pitched the hospital as a possible location of an emergency room. Gov. John Bel Edwards, however, brokered a deal with Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center to open a north Baton Rouge ER instead.
For much of its existence in Baton Rouge, Champion Medical Center was owned by Next Health LLC, a Dallas-based health care company that has grappled with multiple allegations of illegal bribery and kickback schemes.
Champion’s current executives are former Next Health employees. In March, they quietly broke away from the Texas company and formed Forge Health System, taking ownership of the north Baton Rouge hospital.
