[StBernard] news: Hosp. in the parish/Quest. -Craig

[Westley Annis]

Craig:  see comments below the article please...

from sbpg.net

A Hospital Service District for St. Bernard Parish was to be discussed at a Parish Council meeting on Tuesday night, Oct. 16 as groups start to make proposals to operate a full service hospital which is being finalized.

The Council’s executive/finance sub-committee recommended the full Council take up the issue after hearing on Oct. 11 from a group, the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady health system – which currently operates the St. Bernard Health Center in the former Super Wal-Mart area on West Judge Perez Drive – and also wants to operate a hospital in St. Bernard. The same non-profit group runs Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge. 

Other groups, including the Ochsner hospital group, have also expressed interest in operating a St. Bernard hospital. 

The entire parish could be designated a hospital service district, under current proposals, **and a five-member board of commissioners would be created.**

A much needed hospital for St. Bernard, which would attract specialist doctors and which in turn would allow for more elderly residents and nursing homes to move back to the parish, is close to becoming a reality, a number of parish leaders have said. But there are still decisions to be made including which health care facility would operate it.

A maximum of up to a 60-bed hospital could be opened, which would serve St. Bernard’s roughly 30,000 or more population and likely residents from the east bank of Plaquemines.

A new hospital would replace the privately owned Chalmette Medical Center which never reopened after Hurricane Katrina and has since been demolished.

**The Meraux Foundation of St. Bernard has offered land for a hospital in the old pasture just across from the Chalmette Battlefield.**

In the last legislative session, St. Bernard lawmakers including Sen. Walter Boasso and state Rep. Ken Odinet and Nita Rusich Hutter pushed through the creation of a rural hospital designation for St. Bernard Parish, making a health facility in the parish eligible to get reimbursements for costs of treating indigent patients and Medicaid patients. The designation was seen as vital to getting a hospital running in St Bernard.

In the state fiscal year 2007 a rural health pool was funded with some $100 million to be divided among 48 hospitals, of which St. Bernard would qualify for money for a hospital.

Other sources of money are also available.

The Franciscans, about 18 months ago, began operating the St. Bernard Health Center in a 22,000 square-foot temporary facility in the old Super Wal-Mart parking lot on West Judge Perez Drive. A clinic and an urgent care center are operated out of the building.

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Craig, since you are on the Council at this time and possibly another position later, who will compose this 5 member commission and what will it be for?  To oversee the hospital?  Who will be looking for the members of this commission?  What will be the qualifications of the commission's members?  Will this be the same ole-same ole of the ruling elite of the parish?  I'm getting tired of seeing Nunezes and Torres' with their hands in and on everything in SBP.  I don't see where we've been served well by these folks.

Second, the Meraux foundation has *offered* land...  Is the foundation *offering* the land for sale?  Why not just expropriate the land?  I mean, it's not like the foundation is going broke or anything.  Wait a minute; it might be.  Jack and Cresap have their hands in it.

Jim