Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration today will make its offer to the operator of LSU’s hospitals in Shreveport and Monroe for a renegotiated contract with the state, as the governor pushes to rewrite all the LSU hospital privatization deals.
As The Associated Press reports, Edwards’ lead negotiator on the contracts, Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne, says today’s presentation to the Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana is the last offer to be made.
Renegotiated contracts already have been proposed in closed-door meetings with the other providers that took over the safety net services LSU previously provided to the poor and uninsured across Louisiana, he says.
Dardenne wouldn’t provide details about what changes are being sought in the north Louisiana hospitals’ deal—or any others. But he says negotiations are over and hospital operators can either take or leave the reworked arrangements offered.
“We’re making modifications that we think are fair and appropriate and reasonable. And we have every hope that we will retain all the partners,” Dardenne says.
And if some of the hospital operators don’t agree to the new terms? “Then they won’t be our partner any longer and we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” Dardenne says.
Former Gov. Bobby Jindal privatized nine LSU-run hospitals and their clinics through no-bid contracts, with the earliest deal starting in April 2013. In most instances, the management company of a nearby hospital took over operations. Three contracts closed an LSU hospital—in Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and Pineville—and shifted its services to private hospitals.
The Edwards administration says the deals were too hastily slapped together, with terms that aren’t favorable to the state.
“None of the partners are happy. They all wanted more money, and they’re not getting as much as they wanted,” Dardenne says of the renegotiated proposals.
But he insisted the terms being offered by the Edwards administration are fair. Dardenne says he hopes to unveil those terms sometime next week, if the hospital and clinic operators have agreed to the contract changes in principle by then.
The north Louisiana deal has been the most difficult to negotiate, Dardenne says, “because there is a history and there is a contentious relationship and there are a lot of strong feelings” between the research foundation and LSU leaders.
The Associated Press has the full story.
