Louisiana Spotlight: Hospital wounds slow to heal

BATON ROUGE — Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration may have brokered a deal between LSU and the research foundation operating its charity hospitals in Monroe and Shreveport. But just because everyone signed the paperwork, don’t expect the vitriolic relationship to reach great new heights of friendliness.
The reworked terms of the state’s privatization contract seem to anticipate the rocky and difficult relationship between LSU leaders and the Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana will continue. They provide a path for outside, independent arbiters to come in when LSU and the foundation known as BRF can’t reach agreement on basic areas like bill payments.
That’s seemingly an expectation the two sides won’t really mend fences even as the hospitals and the LSU medical school in Shreveport are intertwined and
dependent on each other.
In case that’s not clear enough, the document spells out that BRF agrees “to resume and continue communications with any LSU designated representative” — an obvious indication that hasn’t necessarily been happening.
BRF is operating the Monroe and Shreveport hospitals as University Health, under a no-bid contract struck by former Gov. Bobby Jindal in 2013 as he privatized nine LSU-run hospitals and clinics that cared for Louisiana’s poor and uninsured.
The research foundation hadn’t run a patient care facility before taking over the north Louisiana hospitals, and LSU System President F. King Alexander has said BRF didn’t have the resources or experience for the task.
He’s accused the foundation of not paying its bills.
Foundation leaders say the accusations are untrue and defend BRF’s management as improving regional health care.
LSU tried to remove BRF last year, but was unsuccessful.
Edwards then started the process for ousting BRF when foundation leaders dragged their feet in renegotiating terms for the privatization deal, after all the other LSU hospital and clinic managers had done so.
The Edwards administration said the original contracts were unfavorable to the state, with too little accountability to taxpayers.
Apparently the threat of removal persuaded BRF.
The Edwards administration, LSU and the research foundation all signed the reworked deal last week.
And at least for a little while, both LSU and its north Louisiana hospitals’ manager have put a positive spin on it.
“We are optimistic that the memorandum of understanding will serve as a platform in working collaboratively with LSU and the state to reach our highest and best potential,” Steve Skrivanos, chairman of the University Health board of directors, said in a statement.
Skrivanos championed the new agreement as heralding “a new era of cooperation and collaboration among all parties.”
LSU’s response was more muted.
“This interim agreement helps meet the medical center’s immediate needs and is a step in the right direction,” G.E. Ghali, interim chancellor of the LSU medical school in Shreveport, said in a statement.
The reworked terms look more favorable to LSU.
BRF will provide $37 million in additional payments to the Shreveport medical school for its doctors’ services in the current budget year.
By Oct. 17, the hospital operator also will pay at least $6.9 million LSU says it is owed. Another $5.3 million for disputed billings will be placed into an escrow account, while an outside arbiter determines whether LSU should receive that money.
The idea that university leaders and the hospitals’ manager need independent arbitration to work out that issue — and that arbitration is included for any further disputes — suggests tension isn’t expected to disappear.
Plus, the new agreement only runs through June 30. Permanent changes remain to be negotiated into the full contract.
Long-term questions remain about whether LSU and its hospital operator can ever reach a functional partnership in an arrangement that Alexander has described as a “three-and-a-half-year thorn in our side.”
The Edwards administration clearly wants to move to other financial problems facing Louisiana.
“I’m confident that LSU and BRF can work together for the public purposes of the agreement,” said Edwards’ executive counsel, Matthew Block.
“We’re going to do everything we can from the state’s side and from the governor’s office to ensure that that happens.”
Melinda Deslatte covers Louisiana politics for The Associated Press. Follow her at http://twitter.com/melindadeslatte