Tuesday marked 100 days of collaboration between Lake Charles Memorial Health Systems and W.O. Moss Regional Hospital. To commemorate the occasion and the new Moss Memorial Health Clinic, Gov. Bobby Jindal held a news conference where he highlighted the successes of the state’s public-private partnership. In the Shearman Conference Room of Lake Charles Memorial Hospital, Jindal joined a group of local officials to talk about how the state is entering a new era of health care.

Jindal and the officials from LSU and Memorial focused on the big picture for state health care by looking at the details. From the new urgent care facility and new clinical services available as a result of the partnership to reduced backlogs and wait times, Jindal said he wants to keep improving.

“It’s great progress we’ve made, but even more progress is in the future,” Jindal said. “We still have a lot of work to do, but there is a brand-new era of health care.”

Jindal described how the partnership is rehabilitating the emergency room experience for patients. The former emergency room space at Moss Memorial has been turned into an urgent care clinic open 7 a.m.-10 p.m. every day and doesn’t require patients to have appointments. This increased availability will provide patients with a chance to build relationships with physicians while avoiding some of the costs of a regular emergency room visit. The emergency department now sees 137 patients per day.

“A new Moss urgent care clinic is now connecting patients to primary care physicians rather than expensive, time-consuming ER visits,” Jindal said. “Additionally, this partnership has reduced wait times for scheduling appointments and has cut down on appointment backlogs, meaning our people are getting the care they need to live healthier lives in a faster amount of time.”

The partnership has resulted in more services being made available in the city. Services like specialized heart scans, nuclear imaging and kidney dialysis procedures are available locally, making the need for patients to be moved to other accommodating hospitals a thing of the past. Moss physicians have gone from treating five patients per day before the partnership to treating 25 per day.

“No longer do we have to send folks out of Lake Charles, away from family, friends and their support network,” Jindal said.

He also brought up financial benefits of the public-private partnerships for the state. So far, they have generated $140 million in savings with $20 million being reinvested in patient care at the hospitals.

As far as the speciality clinics go, an orthopedic clinic, breast health clinic, pulmonary and cardiology clinics, a general surgery clinic and a gynecology clinic are the major improvements for local health care. Jindal discussed how each clinic is providing particular benefits for the area, but the main fact is that they are staffed by Moss Memorial physicians who are employed via a physicians group.

Jindal said local patients are feeling the improvements already. Since the start of the partnership between LSU and Lake Charles Memorial, patients who found themselves on scheduling backlogs, waiting for critical services, are starting to quickly be taken care of. Five hundred eighty-one patients were waiting to schedule MRIs in June. Today, all of the patients who needed MRIs either have an appointment scheduled or have already had their scans completed, officials said.

Despite the numbers showing the financial benefits of the partnership, Jindal said the event was about more than just dollars and cents.

“Health care is getting better for the people of Southwest Louisiana,” Jindal said. “And that’s really what it’s all about.”

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. (Rick Hickman / Special to the American Press)

Rick Hickman