BATON ROUGE ? Louisiana?s medical education system will shift some of its residents from the public hospital system to clinics and other community-based health care operations, the head of Louisiana State University?s health-care division said Monday. The move is characterized as part of a trend in both health-care services and medical training but also is aimed at grappling with significant cuts to public hospital programs in recent months, said Dr. Frank Opelka, the university system?s executive vice president for health care and medical education redesign.
Those cuts, the result of a reduction in the federal reimbursement rate for state Medicaid expenditures, are expected to deepen with a plan that Opelka said he will unveil to the LSU system Board of Supervisors next week. ?Once upon a time the overwhelming majority (of medical students) were in the public hospital system, but over the years that has moved with the contraction of patients and beds in the public facilities,? Opelka said.
Opelka outlined the changes Monday in an effort to blunt criticisms made last week by Dr. Fred Cerise, who had been in charge of LSU?s health services and medical education before being removed earlier this summer. Cerise, who was essentially replaced by Opelka, said at a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Baton Rouge that he worried there would not be enough patients and resources left at state hospitals to train new doctors.
Opelka said the changes in medical education could cut costs and help those in training become more comfortable with nonhospital settings that are seeing an increase in use, and provide better services.
Opelka said Cerise?s comments ?represent an old-world view about health-care delivery.?
State hospitals were told to cut about $329 million from their budgets this year when the health-care reductions were announced earlier this summer, but officials, led by Cerise, developed a stop-gap plan that used other pots of money to reduce the amount of the cuts to about $50 million. Still, some hospitals, including Lallie Kemp Regional Medical Center in Independence and Walter O. Moss Regional Medical Center in Lake Charles, saw their budgets drastically reduced.
The plans Opelka will present next week are expected to involve deeper cuts to prepare for future reductions.
?We?re still deliberating through those cuts as we?re trying to walk through all the information that we?ve been planning and considering,? he said.
Jeff Adelson can be reached at jadelson@nola.com or 225.342.5207.
Source: http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2012/09/doctor_training_to_move_away_f.html
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