LSU is shopping around for new health care deals in north Louisiana, hoping to move some of its doctors-in-training to more hospitals in the region because the university’s relationship with the operator of its own hospitals in Shreveport and Monroe continues to deteriorate.
The Associated Press reports that LSU President F. King Alexander calls the university’s arrangement to have the Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana run the two north Louisiana hospitals “a three-and-a-half-year thorn in our side. It’s never been a functional partnership.”
The research foundation runs the hospitals under the University Health System banner. Alexander contends the foundation doesn’t have the resources or experience to run medical teaching facilities that care for the poor and uninsured.
Steve Skrivanos, University Health System board chairman, says the research foundation’s hospital management has improved health care.
“We still believe it’s important to north Louisiana that we work through this,” he says.
Still, LSU is negotiating with other hospitals to spread medical school residents beyond the University Health hospitals, saying that’s similar to what its medical school in New Orleans does. Alexander says he hoped to have “two or three additional partnerships” to announce next week.
The ongoing dispute between the two sides again spilled into public view when University Health’s hospital in Shreveport received a poor, one-star ranking on a four-star federal scale, far below its competitors in the city. The Louisiana Board of Regents last week placed LSU’s medical school in Shreveport on a “fiscal watch.”
Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration has been trying to renegotiate the terms of the privatization deal in north Louisiana, along with the other hospital contracts put in place by former Gov. Bobby Jindal. The Edwards administration says the deals were too hastily slapped together, with terms that aren’t favorable to the state.
