Our priorities with respect to health care are clearly out of whack, writes Business Report editor Stephanie Riegel in her latest column.
“When a cancer-stricken tiger—never mind that he’s LSU’s beloved mascot—gets VIP treatment at the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, attended by more medical professionals than would be a sitting governor and trailed by a string of photographers that would make the Kardashians blush, something is amiss,” she writes.
Emotion has the power to cloud judgment and hamper our ability to rationally discuss important problems like access to health care, Riegel notes. Consider, she writes, the ongoing debate about the lack of emergency facilities in north Baton Rouge.
“The extent to which this is a life-threatening problem has yet to truly be established, though statistics suggest it could be,” she writes, noting a report from The Advocate earlier this year that stated it takes ambulances two minutes longer on average to transport patients to an emergency room today than it did in 2012.
“Those statistics are not limited to north Baton Rouge patients, by the way,” Riegel writes. “It’s a citywide average. Still, the problem is potentially more dire for those who live farther from ERs than for those who live near them, and it requires serious study from health care and public policy experts.”
Instead, the issue has been co-opted by a small but increasingly vocal group of community activists, the #NBRNOW Blue Ribbon Commission, she writes.
The commission has proposed working with a Dallas-based, for-profit health care company, Next Health, to open a freestanding emergency room in the Champion Medical Center in Howell Place.
Next Health says it can turn the Howell Place facility into a satellite emergency room—provided state and local governments pony up about $6.5 million to build it, plus give it another $3 million in annual subsidies to keep it afloat.
But Riegel says the business model doesn’t work and Next Health’s need for an infusion of cash should raise some red flags.
“The reality of satellite emergency rooms, such as the one proposed by Next Health, is that they are not able to deliver to critically ill or severely injured patients the appropriate level of care because they don’t have the specialists on staff ready to diagnose a stroke or surgically remove a gunshot wound to the gut,” she writes.
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