Louisiana has built a $1.1 billion medical teaching hospital in New Orleans, but the manager of the soon-to-be-opened University Medical Center tells The Associated Press that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s budget leaves it millions short of the operating cash it needs.
Altogether, private operators of the state-owned hospitals previously run by LSU asked for $142 million more than Jindal proposed to spend on them in the fiscal year that begins July 1. Nearly $88 million of that was for the hospital in New Orleans, which will shift services from an interim facility to the larger, new hospital this summer.
The Republican governor’s budget would keep funding flat for the deals that privatized nearly all the LSU hospitals and clinics, maintaining the same $1.2 billion combined state and federal spending level Louisiana allocated for this year.
The private hospital managers proposed budgets “that represented the bare bones of what is required to deliver care to the people of Louisiana,” says Gregory Feirn, CEO of LCMC Health—which runs the state-owned hospital in New Orleans—in a written statement provided to The AP. “If the state does not restore the funding, then the state is deciding not to allow for care for the people of New Orleans, deciding not to open their state-of-the-art facility that is nearly finished and striking a crippling blow to medical education in Louisiana.”
State lawmakers are questioning whether Jindal’s proposed financing level will mean reduced services to poor and uninsured patients, under deals that Jindal pushed as a way to improve and expand access to care.
New Orleans lawmakers are particularly concerned. They have been waiting for the city’s new hospital to open and expecting more patient beds and services would come online with it.
