Louisiana's hospital system sees massive layoffs

Jindal

There's been a lot of turnover at LSU Health Care Services, the Louisiana public hospital system headquartered in Baton Rouge.

Not only has the system's top administrator resigned, but it turns out more than 40% of the state's 3,805 layoffs for the fiscal year that ended in June came from Louisiana State University-affiliated hospitals.

Louisiana's Civil Service report, released Thursday, showed LSU made 2,237 layoffs from five of the system's hospitals over the course of the fiscal year. LSU is composed of seven hospitals across the state.

Since 2008, when Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal took office, the state has fired 6,000 of its employees. Dr. Michael Kaiser made a voluntary choice to resign. Kaiser announced last week that he would leave LSU's CEO and CMO posts Aug. 30.

The LSU public hospital system had undergone privatization under Jindal, who argued it would save the state money. Last month, four of the system's hospitals switched over to public-private partnerships.

Kaiser, in an e-mail reported by The Advocate newspaper in Baton Rouge, told friends he was moving to California. He stressed in the e-mail that his departure was strictly because of personal reasons.

“It is true that it has been hard to watch the dismantling of programs that are working, that are important for our patients, and that could be national models,” Kaiser wrote. “Yet I have worked hard to maintain our visions and feel confident, when looking back at these decisions, some will be measured as extremely successful. I have watched too many budget cuts to ignore the opportunities of an expansion of services.”

So what's next for LSU? Not sure, but the football coaches of the SEC, the college conference that LSU belongs to, hosted their annual media day Wednesday in preparation for the start of season. So at least anticipation of the Tigers season will provide the laid-off healthcare workers with some distraction.

Follow Ashok Selvam on Twitter: @MH_aselvam