Louisiana Voice

Northern Louisiana Medical Center (NLMC) may have “ended” its diversion of patients to neighboring facilities last Friday, but an insider says the Ruston hospital and its parent company, Allegiance Healthcare, are far from out of the proverbial woods.

Patients had been diverted to nearby hospitals recently because of a shortage of equipment at NLMC but that situation, while eased somewhat, is by no means alleviated. A source inside the hospital said there is scant equipment to care for more than a handful of patients at a time and should the number of patients exceed the availability of equipment, patients will again have to be diverted to other facilities.

Meanwhile, LouisianaVoice has obtained some numbers relating to the Ruston 130-bed hospital which are unofficial. A source familiar with negotiations said Allegiance Healthcare CEO Rock Bordelon recently rejected a $16 million offer from the Lincoln Parish Police Jury to purchase the hospital.

That same source said Allegiance and Bordelon paid “around $7 million for the hospital but that seems to be extremely low considering Allegiance purchased the hospital from Community Health Systems which has been selling off properties across the Southeast for considerably higher amounts:

• Plateau Medical Center in Oak Hill, West Virginia: $92 million;
• Lake Norman Regional Medical Center in Mooresville, N.C., and Davis Regional Medical Center in Statesville, N.C.: a combined $320 million;
• Three Florida hospitals in Bravera, Crystal River and Spring Hill, to Tampa General Hospital for about $290 million
• Medical Center of South Arkansas in El Dorado was also sold by CHS to a nonprofit organization for an undisclosed amount.

The same source said NLMC currently has outstanding vendor debt that “could be as much as $10 million to $20 million.” That figure was unconfirmed but Bordelon does, in fact, have IRS tax liens against him for about $14 million for having failed to submit tax withholdings from employees.

“I got a first-hand look at the inside of a broken-down facility,” the source, who wished to remain anonymous, said. “It brought tears to my eyes. I remember when the hallways would have visitors, physical therapists and nurses ambulating patients. Instead, what I found was a ghost town.”

The Atlantic, along with The Guardian, is an excellent publication that is both informative and credible.

The Guardian, of course, is a British publication that often beats American news sources to good stories. A case in point is the outstanding series of stories on the sexual abuse saga involving the New Orleans Archdiocese. Domestic media, other than The New Orleans and Baton Rouge Advocate, have barely touched on the story.

The Atlantic’s stories generally are much longer and more detailed than other outlets and case in point is yesterday’s 9200-word essay by writer Anne Applebalm on ways in which Maga is “making the world safe for corruption.”

If you scroll down to page 14 of Applebalm’s piece, she even goes into some detail of how our very own Jeff Landry contributes to the disaster that is the Trump administration.

As Trump’s “special envoy” to Greenland, a title she notes carries no recognition from Denmark, he blew into Greenland’s capital of Nuuk last May to “make a bunch of friends.”

The number-one rule for both comics and politicians (am I being redundant here?) is to know your audience. Comics don’t, for example, roll into Austin, Texas, and make crude jokes about Willie Nelson (as one comic friend learned the hard way). And it was, I believe, Lyndon Johnson who once said, “If you can’t come into a room and tell right away who is for you and who is against you, you have no business in politics.”

Landry, obviously, had not done his homework in advance, having gushed on X to Trump beforehand, “It’s an honor to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the U.S.,” apparently overlooking the fact that folks in Greenland and Denmark are literate and can read. To say the least, offense was taken.

Applebalm wrote, “Upon his arrival, Landry changed into camouflage pants, as if he were preparing for combat. He attended a business conference to which he had not been invited.”

Then, in perhaps the biggest faux pas, he “tried to hand out MAGA hats, without much success.”

What a doofus.

Applebalm continued, “Although Louisiana is near the bottom of all U.S. health-care rankings, and although Greenland has full access to a state-funded national health service, Landry brought a doctor who seemed to be there to discuss Greenlandic health care. On the day after Landry’s departure, Greenlanders staged a large protest outside the new U.S. consulate, which they had dubbed ‘Trump Tower.’ After returning home, Landry nevertheless told Fox News that the people he had met ‘want more U.S. involvement in Greenland.’”

That sounds eerily like something Trump would say and along with it being so blatantly untrue, it’s downright embarrassing. Hey, Guv, which “people” told you that? Can you be specific? Didn’t think so.

This a governor, folks, who has pulled off what I thought was impossible: he makes Bobby Jindal look palatable.

This is a guy, I not remind you, who was elected in 2023 by a whopping 18 percent of the state’s 3 million eligible voters and thinks he had a mandate.

Apparently, that “mandate” includes the proliferation of nondisclosure agreements that state and local elected and appointed officials in every one of the state’s 64 parishes were told by Landry to sign.

I have long bitched and moaned about the existence of nondisclosure agreements in lawsuits settled by the state in which taxpayer money is expended to settle claims against the state. This is our money and we have a right to know how much is involved and to whom. Proponents of the practice claim it’s to discourage future claimants from rolling the dice for a similar payoff. That may be, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s our money and we have a right to know how it’s spent.

But now, Landry has taken NDAs to an all-new level and is figuratively, if not literally, papering the state with the documents that serve the dual purpose of shielding the public from knowing what is going on and the politicians from accountability. Of course, there is proprietary information and there are ways in which to protect that but blank NDAs are not the answer.

And just to show we aren’t ignoring Louisiana’s chief legal official, Attorney General Liz Murrill, there’s also a story in today’s Washington Post in which a federal judge has ruled the ICE was in violation of the U.S. Constitution when they delivered a warning notice to a man in Rochester, New York, over a critical email he had sent to Department of Homeland Security acting director Todd Lyons. The notice, delivered to the man’s home, indicated he risked he might be prosecuted if he continued to engage in political speech.

That action by ICE was reminiscent of Murrill’s silly LETTER last May to the New Orleans mayor, district attorney and city council members warning them they could be jailed for the cardinal sin of disagreeing with her and her boss, Landry, over the removal of a duly-elected clerk of court in Orleans Parish.

But back to Applebalm’s essay and Landry’s claim of local support for more U.S. involvement in Greenland.

Danish politician Julie Rademacher told Applebalm that the night after Landry’s visit, she had gone to a bar in Nuuk where she saw people openly carrying guns—something she said she’d never seen before. “Greenlanders knew that envoys from a predatory foreign power were circulating among them, seeking minerals, money, attention, regime change,” Applebalm wrote.

“They are destroying the trust and the respect in society, in institutions, but also in people,” Rademacher told her.

Kinda makes you understand why Landry prefers NDAs after all.

The good news is Northern Louisiana Medical Center (NLMC) in Ruston has lifted all diversions and is now “fully supplied and fully operational” as of 2 p.m. last Friday.

The bad news is the hospital was ever on diversion in the first place.

An online post last Friday served as the sole notice that things at the medical center had returned to something approaching normal after it diverted patients to other facilities because of a LACK OF SUPPLIES with which to treat the sick and injured.

State inspectors in July found a host of deficiencies at the hospital, including staff shortages and inoperable heart monitoring equipment. At the time, inspectors cautioned the hospital that it was in danger of losing its accreditation and risked closure.

NLMC is one of several hospitals and other medical facilities owned by Rock Bordelon of Bossier City who has some $14 million in federal tax liens outstanding against him.

Civic and political leaders in Ruston and Lincoln Parish have approached Bordelon in efforts to convince him to sell to either the City of Ruston or Lincoln Parish—or perhaps a combination of the two—but he has reportedly rejected an offer of $16 million.

Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports are that the hospital is indeed up for sale and that “outsiders” are bidding for the facility.

The series of events concerning NLMC prompted the Lincoln Parish Journal, an online news service reporting almost exclusively on Lincoln Parish, to post an EDITORIAL today (Sept. 15) which says, “…[T]he problems facing local healthcare have become about something much bigger than deficiencies, supplies, administrator or even the hospital itself.

“They’re about trust. Or lack thereof.”

The editorial was clear in pointing out the issue was not with doctors, nurses, technicians or other healthcare professionals who work at NLMC and Green Clinic, also owned by Bordelon.

“There are good people inside those buildings—people who live here, raise their families here and care deeply about their patients and this community. They deserve our respect and support, as well as the resources necessary to do their jobs.

“But they cant fix what we believe is the biggest problem facing the two institutions.

“Trust.”

The editorial pointed to a healthcare study done last January by Whitecap Health Advisors which documented “significant public distrust of the current hospital ownership an operation, along with concerns about the quality and availability of local healthcare services.”

“”[T]he Lincoln Parish Journal no longer believes Lincoln Parish can begin to regain confidence in Northern Louisiana Medical Centr or Green Clinic as long as Rock Bordelon owns them.

Rock Bordelon should sell Northern Louisiana Medical Cener and Green Clinic and allow others to try to rebuild healthcare in Lincoln Parish,” the editorial said.

“It’s time for a new source.”

It was not the first publication to call out Bordelon over the management of one of his facilities. Back in August 2019, the ARKANSAS LEADER which serves North Pulaski (Little Rock), Lonoke and White Counties ran an editorial in which it labeled Bordelon as a “sleazy operator” for the manner in which the newspaper claimed he “drove North Metro Medical Center in Jacksonville into the ground” and for the way he abruptly closed the hospital with no notice to the public or his employees.

Given his track record with the Jacksonville, Ark., facility, it might well behoove the leaders of Lincoln Parish to be alert for any surprises in the future from Bordelon as regards NLMC.