On Monday, representatives from Acadiana’s two largest hospital systems, Ochsner Lafayette General and Our Lady of Lourdes, convened a meeting of local leaders in the health and social services sector.
The hospital systems announced the results of a mandatory Community Health Needs Assessment and the areas of need they plan to focus on over the next three years. To maintain their tax-exempt status, nonprofit hospitals are required to perform such assessments every three years and provide a plan for addressing the issues identified in them.
The assessment, which was the result of surveys and interviews with community leaders and an online survey open to the public, identified a list of 10 areas of need, with heart disease, cancer and obesity identified as top priorities.
One of those top three priorities, obesity will not be among the seven areas of focus for the implementation plan. “It’s not that we don’t want to do them,” Ochsner Lafayette General Vice President of Network Development and Government Relations Paul Molbert said of the categories that didn’t make the cut. “We want to take where we can best channel our efforts to have the greatest outcome.”
When it comes to obesity and related health issues, the hospitals already have robust programming in place, Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center Director of Community Services Bentley Senegal argued, pointing to a partnership with the Foundation for Wellness to address diabetes and a program at Northside High School to address childhood obesity.
Better access to existing services is among the priorities to be addressed in the plan. “You’ve got to have access to be able to address a lot of those things,” Molbert said. The hospital systems are currently seeking input from community partners on existing programs that can help to address needs identified in the assessment.
“We’re not going to boil the ocean,” Molbert said, managing expectations on what the plan can realistically accomplish. “We’ve made some headway, but we’re also facing some headwinds.”
Through collaboration with the local organizations represented in the room Monday, the hospitals hope progress can be made. “It’s an opportunity to see what everybody else is doing,” Senegal noted.
The group will be collecting responses over the next month before drafting its final implementation plan. The full plan, which will be available to the public, is due to the Internal Revenue Service by June 30.