A nurse at Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville is standing by her story about details of negotiations between the state and Magellan Health Services of Avon, Connecticut, despite denials by a spokesman for a state representative who she insists told her about the preliminary talks with the health care company.
The nurse, who asked that her identity not be revealed because of her job, said Hollis told her that Department of Health and Human Services (DHH) Secretary Bruce Greenstein had confided in a meeting that included legislators that the state was in preliminary negotiations with Magellan to take over the hospital after it begins shutting down as a state facility on Oct. 1.
James Hartman of James Hartman & Associates represents Rep. Paul Hollis (R-Covington), who the nurse said was at the meeting. Hartman emailed LouisianaVoice on Thursday to insist that Hollis “has had no such conversation with Secretary Greenstein.”
“In fact,” said Hartman, “Rep Hollis told me he has never had a private conversation with Secretary Greenstein at all.”
In a second email, Hartman said, “Your source is unreliable. Rep. Hollis has had no such conversation with Secretary Greenstein and, again, has never even had a one-on-one conversation with the secretary.”
The careful choice of “private conversation” and “one-on-one conversation” appear to be the key phrases in Hartman’s denial; LouisianaVoice never said there was a “private” or “one-on-one” conversation between Greenstein and Hollis.
The LouisianaVoice post of Wednesday said that Greenstein “recently confided” in Hollis and Rep. Tim Burns (R-Mandeville) that he (Greenstein) had been in negotiations with Magellan about taking over the operation of the hospital once it is privatized. There reportedly were others in that meeting as well, which would at least lend credibility to the claim of no “private” or “one-on-one” meeting between Hollis and Greenstein.
The nurse, contacted for clarification, stood by her story. “There was a meeting of about 40 people with Greenstein,” she said. “Pat Brister (St. Tammany Parish President) was there and Rep. Burns also attended. It was at that meeting that Greenstein revealed the negotiations.”
She said Hollis called her on Tuesday night after she had initially attempted to contact him. “He told me he had been contacted by more than 30 people in opposition to the closure of Southeast Louisiana Hospital.
“During our telephone conversation, he revealed to me what Greenstein had said. He (Hollis) didn’t name the private company at first and when I asked if it was Magellan, he acknowledged it was,” she said.
Greenstein is in the process of formally declaring the 300-acre site on which the hospital sits as surplus property so that it may be sold at auction. More than 1400 acres of hospital property was sold to St. Tammany Parish last month for $6.45 million, less than half the $14.7 million appraisal of the property in February 2011.
The entire 1900-acre tract (before the adjoining property was sold last month) was appraised at nearly $67.9 million, according to information contained on the Office of State Lands web page.
Even if the property is declared surplus and put up for sale, Magellan would still have to submit the high bid to obtain the property but bid specifications and requests for proposals can be written in such a way as to give a favored vendor an advantage over competitors.
Magellan currently holds three contracts with the state totaling more than $392 million, state records show.
Louisiana Voice 
Tom: I love to read you, but man, you really got this one wrong. Check out Magellan. They don’t have anything to do with buying or running hospitals. Whatever talks are happening aren’t with them. They’re just an insurance company like all the others. They contract with mental health docs and hospitals (both public and private) just like any insurance company does to get their members services. But they don’t actually do the service. Hollis is pretty new with no health care experience. Not sure he would understand this, so maybe he got confused.
And, really, what’s with the demonizing of the private health care industry. Please just be honest. This isn’t about the patients. It’s about state jobs. Which is fine to rant about but let’s call it for what it is, please. Really, how many people with means (including your sources who have insurance and at least one who makes some $170,000 from her state job) would choose to send their child to a public hospital over a private one? If they say they would, they are lying. Why shouldn’t children on Medicaid have the same access to care as someone with private insurance have? Why wouldn’t we want a child in need regardless of income at a place like Children’s Hospital or Oschner or River Oaks or East Jefferson (or better yet getting the care they need at home with their families). You’re being fooled on this one. Private health care access for people who depend on the state for health care is bad for state jobs but it’s not bad for the patients. If it were, everyone with health insurance would be knocking down the doors of LSU and places like Southeast. And that just ain’t happening.
Because private hospitals have an incentive to provide shareholders profits, not provide the best possible care to the uninsured, which is why private hospitals routinely send the uninsured to public hospitals. Sure, a private hospital will cover the poor, so long as there’s a profit to be made. And that profit will be made on the backs of taxpayers who will be paying these private entities not only the cost of care, but a premium for the added-on necessity of profit. Common sense and economics says the cost to taxpayers for caring for the indigent will go UP when the poor get shifted to and shafted by the private model. Case in point, my son, with insurance, has to fight to get an MRI for a torn meniscus (knee swollen, painful to put weight on). He cannot work. But he has to fight to get care while the insurance company tries to determine whether or not it was a “pre-existing” condition so that they can maximize their profit. The incentive in this private profit-driven model is to DENY medical care, not deliver. I don’t hear the hospital and doctors saying, “Oh, you clearly need to get that fixed. We’ll do it for you out of benevolence.” And he does not have the means to pay for it out of pocket. So I guess, your advice, in this model, is to “suck it up, kid. Sucks to not be rich.” There should be no profit incentive in prisons, education, or public health care, as these are services that benefit the community as a whole and should be the responsibility of the whole community.
I have never seen such a clear and compelling statement on this subject. It should be required reading for everybody. Thanks, JMW70710.
As a former RN Supervisor at Southeast Louisiana Hospital for over 15 years I would like to respond to the previous comment regarding “people knocking down the doors” of “Southeast Hospital” and ” that just ain’t happening”. Having worked in admissions just recently I can tell you that is exactly what IS happening. Calls, packets, requests for admission stream in night and day from the private ERs mentioned such as East Jefferson. Unfortunately most had to be turned away because our beds were filled. Our children and adolescent units had waiting lists. Now there will ne no beds available. The quality of care is not substandard it is a state of the art teaching facility.
Thank you for your post, too! It is a real shame that too many people in our society are so blinded by ideology they can’t accept cold, hard facts from people who actually have first-hand knowledge. It’s easier (and apparently more fun) for them to simply listen to right wing nuts who make things up on the fly and make millions doing so.
Personally, I would trust the professionals in a public or charity institution with my life and well-being more than I would trust those under the private, profit-driven model. It’s not that I trust the public institutions to more safe and expert than the private hospitals, but I do believe the people at the private, profit-driven ones have incentive to hide or lie about mistakes and substandard care. I guess that means I DO believe profit-driven, private hospitals and the people working in that system ARE more likely to kill me for a buck.
Deny, deny, deny, when that fails lie, lie, lie.
I wonder if it would be feasible to file a class-action lawsuit against the state alleging infringement of free speech to overturn the restriction on public employees’ contributing to political campaigns. The argument for the restriction was based a compromise: state employees get protection by Civil Service, and we don’t interfere in state politics. However, Civil Service is toothless, leaving us at the mercy of politicians willing to use us as political pawns. We will continue to be used so long as we cannot lobby, provide money support, or campaign support to politicians. To the extent that Civil Service cannot (or will not) act in its capacity to protect employees from political interference, why should we be beholden to the civil service rule that restricts our Constitutional right to political free speech, a restriction that prevents us from protecting ourselves?
Who trusts Hartman?