East Jefferson home owner representatives on Tuesday asked the Jefferson Parish Council for a sedative and some truth serum. They said the process of leasing Jefferson's two public hospitals to private managers is moving too quickly and too secretively. The request from the Civic League of East Jefferson, while stopping short of opposing the lease proposal, made for the...
East Jefferson home owner representatives on Tuesday asked the Jefferson Parish Council for a sedative and some truth serum. They said the process of leasing Jefferson's two public hospitals to private managers is moving too quickly and too secretively.
The request from the Civic League of East Jefferson, while stopping short of opposing the lease proposal, made for the strongest objection yet to a move that hospital officials first disclosed five months ago. The council is scheduled to decide Wednesday whether to eliminate the public's right to vote on leasing the hospitals, possibly clearing the way for the council later this year to approve a contract with an outside operator for East Jefferson General Hospital and West Jefferson Medical Center.
"If the Parish Council allowed the voters to decide, we presume the proponent public officials would surely give us all of the details necessary to make up our own minds," the Civic League, an umbrella organization for East Jefferson homeowners associations, said in a letter to council members. "However, that does not appear to be the plan, so we citizen-owners of the parish hospitals are now compelled to pursue our own due diligence.
"We respectfully request that the Jefferson Parish Council defer any vote that would eliminate the referendum requirement."
The 420-bed East Jefferson General and 427-bed West Jefferson Medical Center are among the most valuable assets and largest employers in the parish. Built with property tax revenue but no longer receiving it, they also are treasured institutions among the public.
But hospital executives paint a grim picture of the future, saying independent, stand-alone medical centers such as Jefferson's are unlikely to survive pressure from insurance companies and the federal government to contain costs. The answer, they say, lies in partnering with larger networks of health care providers to increase their bargaining position with insurers and vendors, and to spread their operating expenses across a broader base of operations.
For more than a year, Jefferson hospital officials have been privately exploring a partnership with outside operators, taking advantage of a 1984 state law that lets them conduct much of their business outside the strictures of the open meetings and public records laws. They have settled on three finalists:
- Ochsner Health System, which owns and operates eight hospitals and 38 health centers.
- Louisiana Children's Medical Center, which runs Children's Hospital, Touro Infirmary and the LSU Interim Public Hospital in New Orleans and has an agreement with the state to manage University Medical Center in New Orleans when it's completed in 2015.
- Nashville, Tenn.-based hospital giant HCA, which runs 162 U.S. hospitals and 113 surgery centers. Among its properties are Tulane Medical Center in New Orleans and Lakeside Hospital in Metairie.
Standing in the way, however, was a 2001 state law and a 1992 local ordinance that forbid the sale or lease of Jefferson's hospitals without voter approval.
The Civic League of East Jefferson asked the Jefferson Parish Council to delay its decision on eliminating the public's right to vote on leasing East Jefferson General Hospital, shown here, and West Jefferson Medical Center. On Feb. 27, hospital officials went public with their plans to change the laws, saying a referendum campaign -- successful or not -- would damage the hospitals' reputations and lessen their value. The state House voted 96-0, the Senate 34-1, to eliminate the referendum requirement for a lease, and Gov. Bobby Jindal signed the measure. The Parish Council is set Wednesday to hold a public hearing on scrapping the same requirement from the local ordinance.
Whether the council will vote Wednesday on canceling the referendum clause is not known. Council Chairman Chris Roberts said last week he expects a vote at the end of the public hearing.
Still, the council has been known to postpone decisions on weighty matters when confronted with a groundswell of objections, especially ones based in arguments for transparency. That's what the Civic League said it seeks.
The group's counterpart on the other side of the Mississippi River, the West Jefferson Civic Association, supports eliminating the public's right to vote.
But the East Jefferson group, at least not yet, isn't ready to endorse the proposal. "Unfortunately the Civic League is unable to support the removal of the referendum requirement from the ordinance, at this time, due to the lack of transparency, in the process up to this point."
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The Parish Council meeting begins at 10 a.m. in the General Government Building, 200 Derbigny St., Gretna.