Three top Champion Medical Center officials are in town today, visiting with local health care officials to discuss issues regarding a proposed emergency medical facility planned at the company’s Harding Boulevard facility.
The officials and members of the #NBR Now Blue Ribbon Commission, which is spearheading the movement to create an emergency room in Champion’s current facility, were mum on those meetings and with whom they were meeting.
However, they did say one of their early sessions went well and that one of the officials hoped to make an announcement soon based on that meeting.
The visit by Champion executives comes one day after the Metro Council passed a resolution encouraging the three main hospitals in Baton Rouge—Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, Baton Rouge General Medical Center and Ochsner Medical Center-Baton Rouge—to enter into a patient transfer agreement with Champion.
During Wednesday’s Metro Council meeting, Mayor Kip Holden attacked the plan for the emergency room and the resolution supporting the patient transfer agreement.
He told council members that Champion and its affiliates had a sketchy background, including financial turmoil, mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcy filings
“We can’t just give them a blessing carte blanche,” Holden told the council, pointing to articles, some of which date back to 1998, detailing the fiscal issues of a company with a similar name.
“All you have to do is go and look at this company and what has happened in Texas,” Holden said.
Champion Medical Center- Louisiana LLC registered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2013, according to the Louisiana Secretary of State.
Josh Ihde, president of Champion Medical, says the company is disappointed about innuendos being spread about Champion’s financial health, adding that the firm has been profitable year-to-date.
“It was disappointing for someone we never met to present a situation that’s not accurate from a financial standpoint,” Ihde says.
“Let’s go one step further,” says Michael Austin, a Champion Medical board member. “Not only is it inaccurate, but we can definitively say Champion Medical Center has never declared bankruptcy, it’s solvent, it’s well funded. It has a parent company that’s solvent and well funded, and no affiliate of Champion Medical Center has ever declared bankruptcy. I have no idea why the mayor said what he said, but it’s simply false.”
Holden today defended his statements at the council meeting. “I guess they didn’t read those articles,” Holden says.
“…There is one company quoted in there that said because they purchased Champion their debt was real, real bad,” Holden says. “So they’re just playing word games. They can keep this slight-of-hand stuff going on, but the facts speak for themselves.”
Ihde says the Harding Boulevard surgical hospital, which would be expanded to include an emergency room, is in the black after two years. He says this is evidence of Champion’s financial stability, though no numbers were provided.
Cleve Dunn Jr., a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission, says the facility will feature a care coordinator who will help decide if people truly need emergency medical care, or if they can be treated at an acute-care facility, thus saving time and money.
Ihde says agreements similar to the one the Metro Council passed last night are in place in other parts of the parish.
“We’re not asking for anything that doesn’t take place,” he says. Champion has similar agreements with Lane Regional Medical Center in Zachary and St. Elizabeth Hospital in Gonzales in Ascension Parish.
—Ryan Broussard
