HJNO Mar/Apr 2023

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  MAR / APR 2022 13 operating the hospital. We took over that entity and then became the manager-oper- ator of the interim LSU hospital. Part of that was done to fully prepare for the opening of University Medical Center. We didn’t want the operation of UMC, the new hospital, to happen on the same day of the closing of the interim LSU Hospital, so we ran the interim LSU Hospital prior to taking over the University Medical Center to create a smooth transition. Being the public-private partnership with the state, again, we saw it as very impor- tant for the community. We also saw it as simply strengthening a partnership that we already had for decades at Children’s Hospi- tal with LSU. LSU and the LSU faculty were a very large part of Children’s Hospital. We, as a system at the time with Children’s and Touro, were already a big part of LSU’s aca- demic faculty in providing academic medi- cine through Children’s Hospital. We also saw that the state was experienc- ing a significant budget deficit and budget challenges to the point where, without a partner stepping in, it would’ve caused them to need to reduce certain programs, which would not have made any sense when the new hospital was opening. We had a natu- ral fit with LSU. We were operating the LSU Obstetrics and GYN program at Touro, so furthering our partnership with LSU and the state made a whole lot of sense for LCMC Health and what we, frankly, were trying to do in the community. Editor Something must have been going right. In 2013, LCMC Health was tapped to operate the soon-to-be-open NewOrleans East, and in 2015, West Jefferson Center, and in 2020, LCMC Health acquired East Jeff General Hospital, basically saving that hospital from bankruptcy. What was LCMC Health doing or proposing to these hospitals that they couldn’t manage on their own? And where were the hundreds of millions of dollars LCMC Health was pumping into the facilities coming from? Feirn Well, I think we’ve certainly seen con- solidation in the healthcare sector over the last decade. It’s been significant, and it’s smaller systems becoming larger. It’s really to leverage the investments that need to be made in technology — whether it’s Epic, our electronic medical record platform, or Workday on the ERP side — and just signifi- cant capital investments in clinical technol- ogy and equipment. It’s difficult for standalone hospitals to make those types of investments. They don’t have a platform to spread it across the larger systems. For facilities like NewOrleans East Hospital, West Jefferson Medical Center, East Jefferson General Hospital, they were faced with a future of making investments that I think they ultimately believed they wouldn’t be able to afford. They saw a need to partner with a larger system. For LCMC Health, again, those hospitals are important to their communities. They’ve been here for decades. We need them in the community. You just asked about bed capacity: Imagine Feirn and his wife, Sarah, pictured with Marye and John Nickens and Jessica Brandt