Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne’s remarks to the News-Star.
Most of the lawmakers emerging from a meeting with LSU Health Sciences Center officials on Tuesday say they’re weary of the escalating war between LSU and its partner operating two north Louisiana safety net hospitals, fearing the standoff could eventually lead to the loss of the medical school in Shreveport.
“If we can’t get our act together here, the medical school could end up on Perkins Road (in Baton Rouge),” state Rep. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport tells The News-Star.
But lawmakers such as Sen. Barrow Peacock, R-Bossier City, and Rep. Jack McFarland, R-Winnfield, say there is no scenario under which Shreveport will lose the LSU medical school.
“There’s no doubt in my mind the medical school will be in Shreveport,” Peacock says.
Northern Louisiana legislators met for three hours with Chancellor G.E. Ghali on the eve of a meeting during which Gov. John Bel Edwards will outline his plans for LSU Health Sciences Center and the Biomedical Research Foundation, the private operator of the University Health hospitals in Shreveport and Monroe.
Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne says he intends to complete discussions with all the partners by Thursday and hopes to have new contracts in place shortly thereafter, maybe next week.
Dardenne also tells Daily Report that the medical school will remain in Shreveport. Dardenne says he doesn’t know of any plans or desires to move the school to Baton Rouge.
“That is simply adding a false element to the discussion,” Dardenne says. “Our mission is to make the medical in Shreveport the top quality school and hospital that it has been.”
LSU and the Biomedical Research Foundation have been at each other’s throats since the foundation secured the contract to operate the hospitals in 2013 as part of then-Gov. Bobby Jindal’s plan to privatize the state’s charity hospital system.
Each blames the other for the medical school’s shaky financial standing.
