Felterman Foundation seeks health scholarship partnership

An East St. Mary philanthropic foundation is offering to help Hospital Service District No. 2 offer scholarships to young people entering health-related fields.
Institutions are offering assistance to people entering medical professions as a way to fight what some say is an alarming decline in the number of health care professionals working in rural areas.
At Wednesday’s district board meeting, Danny Felterman, chairman of the Felterman Family Foundation, made board members an offer.
The foundation would provide $10,000 in each of the next two Mays for four-year scholarships.
The district could decide how to divide the money into scholarships and who will receive them. The foundation would give the funds to the district or to the schools the recipient would attend.
In return, Felterman said, the foundation would like to have its name associated with the scholarships.
He agreed that recipients should be required to work in East St. Mary for some period of time.
“I think our goal is the same as the hospital district’s, which is to aid and promote our local hospitals,” Felterman said.
“We’d love to partner any way we can …,” said Dr. William Cefalu Jr., the board’s chairman. “It’s a boon for our recruiting. We need all the specialties, really.”
Cefalu practices at Ochsner St. Mary, which is owned by the district and operated by Ochsner Health under lease. The district persuaded voters in December 2024 to impose a 9-mill property tax to pay for physical improvements at the Morgan City hospital and to prepare for adding service lines.
To that end, the district is beginning to offer scholarships. The first recipient, named at the January district board meeting, is Landyn Lacoste of Bayou Vista, a Berwick High senior who will study at Fletcher Technical Community College to become a radiology technician. The scholarship is for about $2,500, depending on Lacoste’s course load.
The Felterman Foundation began awarding scholarships to Patterson High School students as soon as it was founded in 1990. The foundation is currently funding 22 four-year scholarships, Felterman said.
Among the recipients are three studying pre-med biology, three studying to become nurses, one studying medical radiology and one studying surgical technology.
The recipients are at Nicholls, Southeastern, Fletcher and the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
Board members agreed to meet with foundation representatives to talk more about a potential partnership.
Staffing issues, as well as an aging population, played a role in Ochsner Health’s decision to end nonemergency labor and delivery services at Ochsner St. Mary in April 2023. The health system consolidated its Bayou Region obstetrics services at Ochsner St. Anne in Raceland.
The Morgan City hospital isn’t alone in dealing with staffing shortages.
A study by the University of Rochester Medical Center found that the number of rural family physicians fell to 10,544 in 2023 from 11,847 in 2017, an 11% drop in six years.
“The speed at which this has happened is remarkable and terrible,” said Dr. Colleen T. Fogarty, the study’s lead author and chair of the university’s Department of Family Medicine.
The decline is expected to continue. The National Rural Health Association says half of rural doctors are 50 or older. About 23% will retire by 2030.
The drop will occur as more young people are moving from cities to rural areas, the association said: “This scarcity leads to delayed care, increased travel distances for patients, and higher rates of chronic diseases and mortality.”