State lawmakers from the Capital Region Legislative Delegation gathered on the steps of the Capitol this morning with dozens of leaders from local community groups and faith-based organizations to protest the recently announced closure of Baton Rouge General Medical Center’s Mid City emergency room.
“We are here today to demand—to demand—that the Mid City emergency room stay open until a viable plan has been devised,” said event organizer Alma Stewart, who heads the group Campaign for Health Care for Everyone Louisiana.
Last week, Baton Rouge General announced that mounting losses of some $2 million per month will force the hospital to shutter the facility within 60 days. Though hospital officials have said they are working with Our Lady of the Lake and other community partners on an alternative, which will include opening an urgent care center near the existing hospital, lawmakers said closing a major emergency room in the middle of the city will put everyone at risk.
Sen. Yvonne Dorsey-Colomb, D-Baton Rouge, said residents of Goodwood, Mid City, downtown and Capitol Heights, as well as students at St. Joseph’s Academy, Westdale Elementary and other nearby schools, would be living in a “Jindal death zone” once the emergency room is shut down.
“In less than 60 days we will all be in danger,” Dorsey-Colomb said.
Though Sen. Mack “Bodi” White, R-Central, employed less fiery rhetoric, he, too, said the closure will impact more than just the uninsured and underinsured population that has relied on the emergency room for primary medical care.
“It’s going to affect people in south Baton Rouge, in Zachary and in Central,” said White, one of the few conservative Republicans to join the group today.
Daily Report has the full story.
