Is it true that a new company is going to take over South Cameron Memorial Hospital?

Jennifer Jones, Cameron Parish assistant district attorney, said the Lower Cameron Hospital District board terminated lease of the hospital’s operator, Florida-based Frontier Hospitals, on Tuesday and filed a petition of eviction.

The company failed to act in good faith and failed to furnish the board with necessary financial information — both grounds for automatic lease termination, Jones said.

The hospital district provides the management company with a taxpayer-funded subsidy, the amount of which is based in part on hospital revenues, she said.

Frontier Hospitals’ executives failed to report as income some grant money the company received, making it appear the company took in less money than it actually did, she said.

The eviction case is scheduled to go before Judge Penelope Quinn Richard in 38th Judicial District Court on Wednesday, Jones said.

The district will ask that the lease and the provider number — a code for Medicaid and Medicare purposes — assigned to Frontier Hospitals for South Cameron Memorial be given to Stonebridge Behavioral Health, she said.

Stonebridge owns the Frontier-managed Calcasieu Oaks in Lake Charles.

In the meantime, Jones said Friday, the judge has issued a restraining order that requires Frontier Hospitals to keep South Cameron Memorial open and to meet its payroll obligations.

Frontier Hospitals CEO David Byrns said the company did report the grant funding and that the district’s allegations about the company’s management of the hospital are untrue.

“They want it back,” he said Friday. “Now that we’ve made it profitable they want it back.”

Frontier Hospitals took over operation of South Cameron Memorial in mid-2011.

Jewelry company founded in 1916

I would like to know where Kay Jewelers was founded. Who were the original owners?

The company was founded by brothers Sol and Edmund Kaufmann, who began selling jewelry in a corner of their father’s furniture store in Reading, Pa., in 1916.

Kay is now owned by Sterling Jewelers, which was started in 1910 in Lorain, Ohio, by Henry Shaw.

Sterling is owned by Signet Jewelers, which was founded in Surrey, England, in 1949 by Leslie Ratner.

Online: www.signetjewelers.com.

The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098, press 5 and leave voice mail, or email informer@americanpress.com

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