Chabert braces for 80 job cuts

Like surgeons battling to maintain life pulsating through a patient on the operating table, administrators, state legislators and parish economic leaders vowed to do everything in their power to keep the region’s primary public hospital functioning while being faced with having critical services and skilled professionals removed due to systematic budget cuts.

“Those babies upstairs are crying,” Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center CEO Rhonda Green said after announcing to her staff of approximately 950 on Friday that 80 of them will lose their jobs across the board and that the hospital’s labor, delivery and neonatal care services will be eliminated by March 5, unless unexpected changes are made to close a $29 million budget gap in the LSU Charity Hospital System of seven facilities that represent more than $1.75 billion in statewide business activity.

“There has been no reprieve from the governor,” Green said in an attempt to lighten the emotional stress in her voice while waiting for a telephone call from the LSU Health Care Services Division Board of Supervisors that might have announced Chabert’s $2.9 million share had been reduced. The call never came.

Changes at the medical facility include a reduction of inpatient beds, which the CEO explained is fluid in nature because it would depend on the number of fulltime staff that is available during any given situation.

“This will also affect Ochsner OB/GYN program,” Green told the Tri-Parish Times. “I have not gotten a confirmation, but they may be pulling the program out of the hospital for obvious reasons.”

Chabert has the only residential internal medicine program in the entire LSU Health Care System, and it is safe for now according to officials who admitted that future implications are not as certain.

Green said that Chabert’s portion of cuts was reduced by the Board of Supervisors from an initial $4.5 million because the hospital has consistently generated income and reduced spending since it opened in 1978. The medical center treats more than 200,000 outpatients, with an additional 5,000 being admitted, per year on a budget of approximately $96 million.

“Chabert Hospital is one of the most effectively run of the entire LSU system hospitals,” Terrebonne Parish President Michel Claudet said. “It provides great service for our people and I’m greatly disturbed that a cut that is so insignificant to the entire budget for the state of Louisiana would have such disastrous consequences for the people of our region.”

Along with other state legislators that represent Chabert’s service area of Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary and Assumption parishes, state Rep. Joe Harrison (R-Napoleonville) said the fight is not over as he voiced frustration with the pending reductions.

“To get cuts right at the end of your fiscal year is devastating,” Harrison said. “We need to do better planning and I’m asking [Gov. Bobby Jindal] to do that.”

Harrison said that he and other representatives have been meeting with various hospital groups in an effort to offset cuts to Chabert. He also stressed the opinion of many that the Houma hospital had been punished for what six remaining medical facilities in the LSU Health Care System have not been able to accomplish.

“We’ve been saying for years that if [Chabert has] self-generating funds it should be able to keep them,” the legislator said. “Government has become very good at throwing money at failures and taking away from those who are successful. That’s why we are in the situation we are in. It does not make sense. It is time to stop the across the board trying to appease everybody. If they can’t carry their own weight, cut them.”

Support of Chabert was voiced throughout the medical and business communities Friday afternoon and during the weekend.

“Terrebonne General Medical Center was notified late [Friday] afternoon with the unfortunate news of Chabert Medical Center having to close its much needed women’s health services in our community,” TGMC CEO Phyllis Peoples said in a printed statement. “TGMC will work diligently with the other tri-parish area hospitals to transition health care services for the people in our community.”

“Anytime you lose 80 jobs it is a significant impact,” Terrebonne Economic Development Authority CEO Steve Vassallo said. “TEDA will help those workers in every way possible to get re-introduced into the workforce whether it is medical or otherwise.”

Vassallo said he is ready to meet with displaced Chabert employees and offer job placement assistance. “We don’t want to lose any of these folks from this community,” he said.

Green noted that plans are in the works to assist patients that might be impacted by cuts to medical services. “We will be calling patients and telling them this is going to happen,” she said. “We will assist [expectant mothers] in finding physicians or hospitals to deliver in.”

In addition to women and infant care, the Chabert CEO said she is concerned about the implications a loss of employees and services might mean for the co-operative efforts of hospitals both within and outside the LSU Health Care System.

“We are going to have challenges,” Green said. “With the layoff of 80 fulltime staff positions and reduction of inpatient beds … there is a two-fold problem. When we reduce the number of patients we have in-house affects our ability to take patients from outlying facilities, and we do take patients from several.

“The second part of the problem is that New Orleans [Interim Medical Center of Louisiana] is doing the same thing,” she added. “They have service closures of about 240 layoffs. So that’s going to impact our ability to transfer patients to them. It is kind of a domino effect that could be an issue for the community.”

Harrison confirmed that officials have been looking at “alternative plans” for Chabert, but declined to reveal details. “It would involve trying to create the kind of medical Mecca that we need to protect our people,” he said.

“It’s bad, but not as bad as it could be because we were fiscally responsible,” Green said with a sigh. “We have saved ourselves from having a really catastrophic event.”

LSU Health Care System Vice President of Health Affairs Fred Cerise defended the cuts as being necessary in light that the hospital system as a whole lost approximately $100 million during the course of three years. “Most … patients have Medicaid, so they will receive services elsewhere,” he told the Times Picayune.

In all, the LSU Health Care System is faced with 645 job losses in addition to service cuts connected to its $780 million budget.

In addition to Chabert, LSU System cuts include: The Interim Medical Center of Louisiana in New Orleans at $14.9 million and 240 positions; Earl K. Long Medical Center in Baton Rouge; $6.7 million and 148 positions; and University Medical Center in Lafayette, at the cost of $4.2 million and 107 positions. Details were not disclosed for the Bogalusa Medical Center, Lallie Kemp Medical Center in Independence, and W.O. Moss Medical Center in Lake Charles.

Separately, undisclosed reductions are also expected for LSU Health Care Sciences Center in Shreveport.

Cuts to the LSU Health Care System resulted from the Jindal administration’s budgetary plan of transplanting funds from public health facilities to help the Department of Health and Hospitals avoid deep spending surgery because of the state’s $251 million mid-year state budget deficit.

Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center has been ordered to cut 80 jobs and close the hospital’s labor, delivery and neonatal care services by March 5, unless the $29 million budget gap in the LSU Charity Hospital System is met. FILE PHOTO