Louisiana Voice

LouisianaVoice has learned that Gov. Piyush Jindal, through the LSU Board of Supervisors, is planning to lay off up to 600 people at the Interim LSU Public Hospital in New Orleans within the next few weeks in a move that will further reduce access to health care for Louisiana’s indigent population.

The action also would mean the loss of about 50 of the facility’s 201 beds.

The layoffs were mentioned by Dr. Frank Opelka, recently appointed to replace Dr. Fred Cerise as head of LSU’s health care system, during last week’s meeting of the Board of Supervisors. Though he said he would be accelerating the cuts that Dr. Cerise and Dr. Roxane Townsend had developed in an effort to mitigate negative impacts, Opelka never mentioned any numbers and apparently no one on the Jindal-dominated board, thought, or wanted to ask.

Nor did any board members inquire as to the impact the cutbacks would have on the ability to continue to provide health care to indigent residents and neither was the question raised as to how the action might affect some 300 residents who train at the facility.

The Interim LSU Public Hospital presently employs about 2100 persons, meaning that about 24 percent of the facility’s personnel and 25 percent of its beds will be lost.

Last Friday, Robert Barish, chancellor of LSU Health Shreveport, notified his faculty and staff that the LSU Board had approved a resolution authorizing the LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport and the Health Care Service Division to issue a request for proposals (RFP) “for the purpose of exploring public-private partnerships for the LSUGSC-S affiliated hospitals, namely the LSU Medical Center in Shreveport, the E.A. Conway Medical Center in Monroe and the Huey P. Long Medical Center in Pineville/Alexandria.”

Consideration of that resolution was not added to the board’s agenda until late Thursday and the board subsequently amended the wording to include “each of the hospitals in Health Care Services Division.”

That amendment to include “each of the hospitals in Health Care Services Division,” while largely ignored and not discussed at all, is key in that it means that “every hospital within the LSU System is now on the table for privatization,” as one observer put it.

“Shreveport is moving faster but they are just the first,” he said. “The dismantling of indigent care will now occur much more quickly and more broadly.”

The resolution says, “The President shall have the discretion to authorize the release of the Request for Proposal and to accept the proposal that he deems in the best interest of the university.”

It did not specify if that would be current Interim President William Jenkins or his successor, recently rumored to be Steve Moret, current Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Economic Development.

Administration officials and LSU Board members have denied that the fix is in for Moret to become the next president. Jenkins said it would be ridiculous to hire a consultant to conduct a national search if the decision had already been made.

The layoff plan is the latest example of the slash and burn tactics employed by Piyush in his zeal to cut health care services to the poor while at the same time dismantling the teaching hospitals that currently serve about 200 LSU and 100 Tulane University medical students.

Beginning with the firing of LSU President John Lombardi last April, Jindal, through his hand-picked Board of Supervisors, has fired or reassigned Drs. Cerise and Townsend and LSU System General Counsel Ray Lamonica.

At the same time, he has implemented severe cutbacks at Lallie Kemp Regional Medical Center in Tangipahoa Parish and at LSU Hospital in Bogalusa—cutbacks that have adversely affected the availability to provide care in the areas of oncology, gynecology, disease management and pediatrics and the loss of up to 150 jobs at Lallie Kemp. Jindal also announced the closure of Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville, beginning next month, a move that will leave the entire southeastern section of Louisiana without state mental health treatment centers.

The most incredulous statement to come out of all this is that of Jindal spokesman Kyle Plotkin who, when asked whether Piyush was involved in Cerise’s firing, said, “That’s a decision for the board and the LSU System president.”

But almost as puzzling is the deafening quiet from members of the legislature whose constituents—both health care providers and their patients—stand to be negatively impacted by the recent chain of events.

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