Prompted by monthly operating losses in the area of $2 million, Baton Rouge General Medical Center announced Tuesday it will close the emergency room at its Mid City campus within the next 60 days.
It marks the second time in six months the hospital has made such an announcement. But unlike the threatened closure last summer—which was staved off when the state came through with $18 million to help cover the hospital’s cost of providing uncompensated care in the ER—this time state and hospital officials say the shutdown will be for real.
In an interview with Daily Report, Baton Rouge General CEO Mark Slyter says hospital officials thought they were close to reaching a deal with the state that would enable the ER to remain open.
“We had escalated our discussions with the state to come up with an answer, and I think we were coming close,” Slyter says. “But in the last month with everything that was happening with the state budget (which is facing a $1.6 billion shortfall), it just became more and more challenging, but we accept the difficulties they are facing.”
Slyter declines to says specifically what possible options hospital officials had presented to Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals or how much they were asking for. He also won’t say whether Baton Rouge General was pressing for changes to the state’s reimbursement structure, which gives Our Lady of the Lake the lion’s share of reimbursements for providing care for the poor while giving very little to Baton Rouge General and other providers.
Slyter would only say, “We had presented them with some options, but we exhausted all of those.”
Also this week, Business Report presented its annual Leadership Power Breakfast, at which a panel that included Louisiana Association of Business and Industry President Stephen Waguespack, LSU President F. King Alexander and Louisiana Chemical Association President Dan Borné warned that Louisiana’s budget crisis threatens to cripple years of growth and diversification in the state’s private sector while also derailing recent improvements made in higher education. —Steve Sanoski
