Officials from the Student Health Center and Our Lady of the Lake Hospital discussed their new multi-million dollar partnership in a forum in the French House on Wednesday.
LSU and Our Lady of the Lake will be entering a $170 million partnership over the next 10 years, $40 million of which will be going to the Student Health Center.
Around 30 people came to the forum hosted by Student Government.
Our Lady of the Lake will not be involved with the gynecology clinic, the Lighthouse program or wellness and health promotion, the university said in an email earlier this month. Our Lady of the Lake will fund services in the rest of the Student Health Center.
Catherine Smith O’Neal, chief medical officer at Our Lady of the Lake, said their involvement hopes to expand access to underinsured students.
“We already have a world class health center,” said Dan Bureau, LSU’s assistant vice-president for health and wellbeing. “This partnership will just up our game.”
Bureau said that this partnership will seek to improve the health of the student body. He said Louisiana has some of the lowest health outcomes in the country, which is why he said this partnership is important.
Julie Hupperich, the executive director of the Student Health Center, said none of the services the health center already provides will be restricted by this partnership.
Many of the people in attendance voiced concerns that Our Lady of the Lake’s religious affiliations would impact care surrounding LGBTQ students and gynecological services, but Hupperich assured students that no services will be restricted.
“They’ll be expanding some of the services we’ve offered previously,” Hupperich said.
O’Neal stated that she had previously worked at an LSU hospital before moving to Our Lady of the Lake. She said she experienced few differences in terms of the care either provided, so she said students shouldn’t have to worry about the hospital’s religious ties affecting their care.
The reason Our Lady of the Lake won’t be assisting in the gynecology clinic is because the hospital doesn’t have expertise in that area, O’Neal said.
Hupperich said the health center will be adding a new patient portal called MyChart to handle scheduling and communications, while a separate portal will be used for everything else.
LaDonna Williams, vice president of the Our Lady of the Lake Physician Group, said the hospital has no intentions of making a profit off of the partnership with LSU; Our Lady of the Lake is classified as a not-for-profit institution.
Hupperich said the Student Health Center will be looking to expand embedded therapists, which are therapists that serve just a single college. LSU currently has one embedded therapist in the honors college, but wants to add more.
A student asked the forum whether Our Lady of the Lake would use this partnership to try to refer students to doctors that are a part of the Our Lady of the Lake system. O’Neal said the hospital doesn’t dictate where patients are referred, and students can choose which doctors they wish to see. She said the health center physician who is treating the student can provide options to the student for them to choose.
Another student asked if Our Lady of the Lake would seek to put religious imagery in the Student Health Center. LaDonna said the only religious imagery that may appear in the health center would be the logo of Our Lady of the Lake, but that would be it.
The health center’s $40 million dollars is only a chunk of the change from Our Lady of the Lake. Tens of millions more will be distributed between the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, a new disciplinary science building, a healthcare-based research fund and advancements in athlete health and wellness.
