Efforts to bring an emergency room to north Baton Rouge were met favorably today as a Louisiana Senate panel advanced a bill that provides for the licensure and regulation of freestanding ERs.
Senate Bill 465, by Sen. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge, was heard before the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare. Barrow, who offered amendments to the bill before it was passed, told the committee the bill addresses access to emergency care issues in north Baton Rouge and parishes north of East Baton Rouge.
Residents living in those areas were left without access to an emergency room after Earl K. Long Medical Center and the emergency room at Baton Rouge General Mid City closed.
Barrow told the panel the closures left more than 100,000 people, including those living in Port Allen and the Feliciana parishes, without readily accessible emergency care.
“We found out that many of those individuals had been traveling to Baton Rouge to receive care at Earl K. Long,” Barrow said.
Gary Chambers, publisher of The Rouge Collection, testified in favor of the bill. Chambers told the panel a freestanding emergency room would help ease the burden on the parish’s existing emergency rooms.
“We know the price tag on a hospital is extremely expensive,” Chambers said. “In our state’s current fiscal situation, we know to ask for that today would be unreasonable, but a freestanding emergency room is certainly reasonable.”
The senator said she learned through research that Texas has numerous free-standing emergency rooms. Louisiana requires the emergency rooms to be connected to a partner hospital, she said.
Greg Waddell, the Louisiana Hospital Association’s vice president of legal, governmental and regulatory affairs, argued against the bill. Waddell said the association is not opposed to expanding medical services to north Baton Rouge, but the bill has statewide effects and freestanding ERs generally cannot receive Medicare and Medicaid patients. Barrow said an ER can receive Medicare and Medicaid patients if it has a partnering hospital.
Sen. Troy Brown, D-Napoleonville, whose district includes Port Allen, thanked Barrow for acknowledging that Port Allen and West Baton Rouge Parish were impacted by the closures and motion to move the bill favorably.
In April, Dallas-based health care company Next Health LLC pitched its plan to bring an emergency room to north Baton Rouge.
—Alexandria Burris
