Louisiana Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne met Wednesday with top executives from Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center to let them know the state does not want to end its partnership with the hospital, which has a contract to provide indigent care and graduate medical education in the local market.
“I wanted them to hear directly from me,” says Dardenne, who met with OLOL CEO Scott Wester and CFO Jeff Limbocker. “We had a good visit, and I told them how much the administration recognizes the importance of what they are doing and we are going to try and do the best we can to provide some funding and not simply say this is going away.”
Earlier this week, Department of Health and Hospitals Undersecretary Jeff Reynolds told a House budget committee that with an estimated $750 million revenue shortfall for the 2016-17 fiscal year, the state will no longer be able to fund its partnerships with OLOL and several other institutions around the state that provide care for the uninsured.
Proposed budget cuts would leave only enough money to continue funding facilities in New Orleans and Shreveport, which have LSU Health Sciences Center campuses.
At the time, Wester said the lack of funding would automatically terminate OLOL’s contract with the state, which would force the closure of multiple LSU Health clinics and OLOL’s trauma and urgent and primary care clinic in north Baton Rouge, as well as end training opportunities for LSU medical residents.
Dardenne tells Daily Report while some of the state’s 10 partnerships likely will have to end because of “the realities of the situation,” the state appreciates the number of indigent patients OLOL sees every day, as well as the scope of its medical residency program.
“The door is not shut on this,” Dardenne says. “It’s not. … We’re cognizant of the important services they are providing, and we don’t want to kill residency programs.”
It’s not at all clear what kind of solution is possible at this point outside of raising additional taxes, which cannot happen during the current session but could be considered later this year during another special session.
Regardless, Dardenne says OLOL will have to be willing to renegotiate its contract with the state, which he calls “very generous.” Under the terms of its 2013 contract, which was the first of 10 public-private health care partnerships the state entered into, OLOL receives 100% reimbursement for the cost of providing indigent care and 95% reimbursement for caring for Medicaid patients.
“The state is not in a position where it can afford the commitments it made under the previous administration,” he says.
Wester and Limbocker were out of town today and unavailable to comment on Wednesday’s meeting and the hospital’s willingness to renegotiate the terms of its contract.
—Stephanie Riegel
