Lady of the Lake OK'd as a teaching hospital
by MARSHA SHULER - Advocate (excerpt)

A federal health agency has approved two key financial components of a deal that would make Our Lady of the Lake Medical Center home to LSU’s medical education and hospital programs, state health secretary Alan Levine said. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also laid out a blueprint for financing of the outpatient clinics now run by of LSU’s Earl K. Long Medical Center, Levine said. “They have signed on as a full participant in this. They understand what we are trying to do,” Levine said.

The LSU-Our Lady of the Lake deal will lead to the eventual closure of LSU’s antiquated Earl K. Long facility on Airline Highway in north Baton Rouge. Medicaid and free-care patients who would use LSU’s EKL hospital would be treated at Our Lady of the Lake in the future. LSU-operated medical education programs would transfer to the OLOL facility on Essen Lane in south Baton Rouge.

As progress is being made in the financing arena, planning continues for $200 million in new construction on the OLOL campus to make way for LSU’s arrival. OLOL communications chief Catherine Harrell said design work is under way and construction could begin early next year for a major part of that plan: a new top of the line Level 1 trauma center and the addition of 60 inpatient bed capacity. “We are still on target for a transition of the LSU programs in late 2013,” Harrell said. On the LSU side, construction should begin in spring 2011 on a $2 million urgent-care center at LSU’s north Baton Rouge clinic located near the Earl K. Long facility, said LSU hospital system chief Roxane Townsend.