ER campaign gaining momentum

The capital campaign to fund construction of a new emergency room at Acadia General Hospital is gaining momentum.
Officials with the Lafayette General Foundation have been meeting with local and area residents “drumming up support” for the proposed $4 million project and “it’s going pretty well” said Cian Robinson, executive director of the Foundation.
“We raised about $80,000 at the Gala and we have about $600,000 to date — and commitments for more,” Robinson said Tuesday. “What’s interesting to note is that half of that has come from the American Legion.”
Acadia Post 15 (Crowley) owned and managed the former American Legion Hospital from its opening in 1916 until May, 2014, when it entered into a partnership with Lafayette General Health, a regional care network whose flagship is Lafayette General Medical Center.
Since taking over operations there, LGH has upgraded the facility and added such services as cardiac care, orthopedic care and cancer treatment.
But it’s the hospital’s emergency room that gets the most attention, according to Robinson.
“The emergency room there now was set up to handle 600 patients a month. We’re seeing about 1,600 a month,” he said.
The current E.R. at Acadia General is 3,358 square feet in area and has six exam rooms, four of which are divided by curtains.
The new facility, which will be located just off the current emergency room, will be 9,768 square feet and will include 16 exam rooms “with walls, not curtains,” Robinson said.
Some steps have already been taken to speed up treatment in the hospital’s E.R. and Robinson touts the efforts of Hospital CEO Heather Harper for these upgrades.
“Heather’s implemented what she calls a ‘Nurse First’ triage system whereby the first person you see upon entering is not a receptionist but a nurse,” he said.
That program alone has greatly decreased the “wait time” in the emergency room and has led to increased confidence by patients, Robinson added.
“And with a new emergency room, that confidence will only increase,” he said.
Robinson said the Foundation has enjoyed “tremendous support” locally in its efforts to raise funds for the new emergency room.
“The current and future commitments that we’ve received show that people here see the value of what we’re doing,” he said. “It will benefit the area not only health care-wise, but economically.”
In addition to the new construction, LGH will bring in about $1 million in new equipment for the enlarged E.R., which is expected to generate about $55,000 of additional sales tax revenue for the parish and the city of Crowley.
The hospital currently employs 320 people with an annual payroll of $18 million. Sixty-nine percent of the hospital’s employees reside in Acadia Parish.
The hospital has an annual operating revenue of $34 million, with $2.1 million in annual expenditures spent in Acadia Parish and more that $500,00 in sales tax paid to the parish and the city.