LSU: Chabert cuts may be deeper still

Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center is waiting to see if it will be was slapped with another round of financial cuts from LSU Health Care System Board of Supervisors.

Reports that the Houma-based public hospital was being faced with immediate closure of two operating rooms and a loss of 17 support jobs was erroneous, according to a spokesperson for Chabert CEO Rhonda Green.

“We just don’t know what to expect,” Green said prior to a meeting Friday that was intended to outline a series of across-the-board cuts in the system.

The LSUHCS was faced with a potential $300 million slashing on July 1. By Monday, that number had been reduced to approximately $50 million, leaving Chabert facing a potential operational downgrade totaling $3.7 million.

“I’m still trying to decipher exactly what the cuts are [and] why we cut Chabert,” state Rep. Joe Harrison (R-Napoleonville) said.

Harrison is among the Tri-parish delegation of elected officials who during the 2012 legislative session proposed measures that would have changed that manner in which Chabert conducted business and stabilized its financial standing. The bill would have also spared it from financially supporting other facilities within the LSUHCS.

“We piloted a program that would have allowed Chabert to exist inside the LSU system, yet separate from the health care services,” state Sen. Norby Chabert (R-Houma) said.

Chabert, whose late father is the namesake for the Houma medical center, explained that among the 10-member LSUHCS, only hospitals in Shreveport, Monroe and Alexandria are allowed to handle their budgets separately from the LSU structure.

“In south Louisiana, the seven hospitals are intermingled with one budget,” Chabert said. “Each is given its own share of the overall budget, but when there is a cut to the overall budget, it is divided among all [seven] hospitals, regardless of efficiency and production.”

Members of the Tri-parish delegation had complained that Chabert, while not officially able to make a profit, was the system’s only hospital that pulls its own weight financially. They also objected to the Houma-based medical center having to cover financially for hospitals that have produced continued financial losses.

“My bill [presented during the 2012 regular session] was trying to take the [day-to-day] decision making and budgetary decision making out of the hands of the LSU Board of Supervisors and LSU system heads, and place that budget in control of a non-profit board and executive director,” Chabert said. “This is how hospitals should operate. You know who operates like that? Terrebonne [General Medical Center] operates like that. Thibodaux [Regional Medical Center] operates like that.”

Harrison complained that while rank-in-file hospital employees lost jobs during various rounds of cuts, employment among state-level administrators remained secure.

“We’re making cuts to hospitals, but less than 3 percent cuts at the [Department of Health and Hospitals] and [Department of Human Services],” Harrison said. “At the high end people say, ‘We are making cuts,’ but who loses their jobs? The ones barely eking out a living.”

In an effort to level the economic playing field in health care, Harrison and Chabert said return efforts to change how Chabert operates within the LSU system will be made in 2013.

Green said her greatest concern is not only that a large segment of the population could become medically disenfranchised, but that overall health care could be reduced to being oriented around crisis response rather than preventative medicine.

“Most of our strategies are not renewable,” LSU Vice President for Health Affairs Fred Cerise told the Associated Press. “They do, however buy us some time.”

Monday’s announced cuts translates to a loss of more than 300 jobs for the entire health care system, and cuts capacity for outpatient treatment by more than 78,000 patients.

Mid-year state budget cuts in February led to the closure of Chabert’s labor and delivery department, neonatal unit and a loss of nearly 100 jobs. The Chabert spokesperson said an announcement on specific cuts could be made next week.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.