Both St. Mary hospitals on 'at-risk' list
Ochsner St. Mary and the former Franklin Foundation Hospital appear on four U.S. senators’ list of institutions that are at risk of closure as the U.S. House neared a final vote Thursday on legislation changing the state-federal Medicaid program.
In all, 33 rural Louisiana hospitals are at risk, more than any other state except Kentucky’s 35, according to the senators’ letter.
U.S. Sens. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden and Jeffrey Merkley of Oregon, and Chuck Schumer of New York, all Democrats, based their assessment of rural hospitals’ financial health on research from the University of North Carolina.
Among the factors the research considered are whether hospitals have experienced three straight years of negative margins and whether hospitals are “in the top 10% Medicaid payer mix of rural hospitals across the country.” Neither Ochsner St. Mary nor the newly renamed Bayou Bend Health System in Franklin meets the negative margin requirement, but both are among the top 10% of the payer mix.
The potential Medicaid changes are in the budget reconciliation bill that has been shaped by action in both chambers of Congress.
The legislation is Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.” The most controversial Medicaid provisions include a work requirement for many recipients and changes in the way health care providers are taxed to raise money for the program.
Top Republicans have justified the changes as controls on waste and fraud and say they’re necessary to keep the federal deficit in check.
Trump himself has repeated publicly that there will be no cuts in Medicaid.
But the Medicaid changes have cost the bill some support even among Republicans. Notable among them is U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who announced that he won’t run for re-election just before voting against the Senate version.
The four senators wrote in their letter to Trump that the contemplated changes in Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act would cost $1 trillion and cause 16 million Americans to lose health care.
Attempts to reach Bayou Bend CEO Stephanie Guidry for comment were unsuccessful.
Peter November, CEO of Ochsner Health, signed on to a June 28 letter with other hospital administrators to sound a warning about the Medicaid cuts.
“Medicaid is not just a budget line — it is a lifeline for children, seniors, people with disabilities, and working families,” the letter said. “Cuts of the magnitude currently under discussion would adversely impact our collective ability to provide care, train the next generation of physicians, employ tens-of thousands of people, and it would stifle the billions in economic impact we generate each year.”
Steep cuts could force consolidations, loss of services and closures, the letter said.
The letter said the hospital executives prefer the House version, even though a $50 billion rural health care fund was added to the bill in the Senate.
Various sources place the percentage of St. Mary residents on Medicaid at 32-37%.
The Medicaid debate may mark the second time in six years that Morgan City’s publicly owned hospital has been at risk of closure.
Lifepoint, a Tennessee company that operated the hospital under lease with Hospital Service District No. 2, announced that it was pulling out in 2019.
According to subsequent accounts, then-Gov. John Bel Edwards, eager to avoid the closure of any rural hospital in the state, played matchmaker between the hospital district and Ochsner Health, the state’s largest health care provider.
Ochsner assumed Lifepoint’s place as operator of the hospital, which then became Ochsner St. Mary.
Copies of the letters from the four senators and from the hospital executives can be downloaded from the links below.