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Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals announce extensive budget cuts
By BNO News
BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA (BNO NEWS) – Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine announced Wednesday a drastic reduction in department spending and proposed privatizing certain department programs to offset the $108 million deficit.
“Governor Jindal made clear he wanted us to protect services for the elderly and the disabled as we approached the mid-year budget challenges,” Levine said. He added that “our approach has been to consider access to Medicaid services and to vital programs while acknowledging that in tough times, we cannot be everything to everyone. We have to be targeted in how we spend our resources.”
Reductions in the non-Medicaid program are part of a larger strategy by the Department to rely more on community-based care in the private sector rather than state-funded institutions. Anthony Keck, Deputy Secretary, said that “by relying less on more costly state-operated services when we have capacity existing in lower-cost, highly effective and proven private community-based services, we are able to deliver high quality, compassionate care to our clients at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”
A transition task-force led by officials from each program office is working with DHH human resources and Civil Service to attempt to relocate employees displaced by the new department policies, where possible. Additionally, the transition task-force is considering retirement incentives and other motivations to encourage private sector establishments to hire state employees who have been laid off as a result of the budget cuts.
Keck states that “many of our employees will be highly sought-after in the private sector […]” and he insists that every possible effort will be made “to match up employees with employers.”
The budget cuts have eliminated at least 818 positions throughout the Department’s programs including the Office of Public Health, the Office of Mental Health, and the Office for Addictive Disorders.
“Government must be innovative and must constantly be in search of better ways to provide quality service in a more efficient manner,” Levine said. “We will continue to pursue policies to move Louisiana’s health agenda forward while we ensure we are living within our means.”
The Department announced previously this year that the Medicaid program was facing a spending deficit. Due to a revised estimate in relation to the H1N1 Influenza expenditures, the budget has been revised downward from the November 2009 estimate of $275 million in total funds to an estimated $248 million.
The Department of Health and Hospitals stated that they have already begun working to identify cost-saving measures and rate reductions to implement in state fiscal year 2011, when they say there will likely be even greater financial challenges.
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