A deal that requires Children's Hospital to expand psychiatric beds will help provide needed services that have dwindled in the city since Hurricane Katrina, state lawmakers said at a meeting Monday night at St. Paul's United Church of Christ in Uptown New Orleans. The proposal allows the hospital to purchase the 17-acre campus of the former New Orleans Adolescent Hospital...
A deal that requires Children's Hospital to expand psychiatric beds will help provide needed services that have dwindled in the city since Hurricane Katrina, state lawmakers said at a meeting Monday night at St. Paul's United Church of Christ in Uptown New Orleans. The proposal allows the hospital to purchase the 17-acre campus of the former New Orleans Adolescent Hospital in exchange for increasing services at the Calhoun Street facility.
House Bill 720, sponsored by state Rep. Neil Abramson, D-New Orleans, mandates that Children's open up 16 pediatric mental health hospital beds, while also expanding its autism center and creating a transition program to help patients as they move from inpatient treatment to outpatient treatment. The bill also requires that the hospital provides mental health treatment for children 5 or younger.
Children's Hospital, which has sought to buy the NOAH property for decades, has pledged to pay the state $29 million. In exchange, the hospital would receive between $10 million and $20 million in capital outlay money that had previously been earmarked to renovate the NOAH campus, Abramson said.
State law had required Children's to expand its mental health services on the NOAH campus, which the hospital resisted. The hospital bought the former DePaul Hospital after Katrina, where it currently offers mental health treatment for young people and leases beds to LSU for adult patients.
Several residents at the meeting questioned whether the 16 beds that Children's plans to add to its existing 33-bed facility for children will be sufficient. They noted that before Katrina, the NOAH campus provided treatment to a larger group of children.
"I agree with you that pre-Katrina NOAH did a lot more," Abramson said to one skeptical resident. "We can't put the entire burden on Children's."
Abramson said he will be looking for ways to increase services in the New Orleans area. Too often, children with mental health problems have been sent out of the metropolitan area, he said.
Cecile Tebo, a mental health advocate, noted that the Medicaid rates for mental health providers are low, which means that some private hospitals have been reluctant to take low-income patients. She said the next challenge for the state would be increasing the reimbursement rates to attract more providers into the program.
Greg Feirn, chief financial officer at Children's Hospital, emphasized that the nonprofit hospital takes Medicaid patients, saying they don't turn away families if they can't afford care. Feirn told residents of the Uptown neighborhood near Children's Henry Clay Avenue campus that the expansion will lessen parking problems that have at times spilled into the street.
Children's hasn't finalized its proposal for renovations of the buildings on the NOAH campus, he said. Two of the buildings there were constructed in the 1800s and won't be torn down, he said. Children's also doesn't plan to tear down the main hospital building.
But Feirn said it is possible that Children's will look to tear down some of the newer buildings closer to its main campus as it expands onto the property.
Other New Orleans lawmakers at the meeting were Reps. Helena Moreno, Walt Leger, and Jared Brossett, as well as New Orleans City Councilwoman Susan Guidry.