University Health adds Huebbers as CEO

In place for about a month, University Health Chief Executive Officer Ron Huebbers came on board at almost the same time news broke that the deal to privatize Louisiana’s charity hospitals was in trouble with the federal government.

News outlets began reporting in early May that the federal government had rejected Louisiana’s financial plan for privatizing the former LSU hospitals around the state. Reports indicated the method the state had used to apply for expense money to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could throw the entire deal into jeopardy.

Huebbers is confident that whatever the result of the discussions between the state and CMS, the local hospital is not part of the problem.

“Some of the other former LSU facilities prepaid their rent far in advance. The state then took that money and sent it to the federal government for Medicaid matching funds,” Huebbers said. CMS reimbursed those “expenses” but after reviewing them determined the payments were technically a violation of their rules.

Huebbers said University Health Shreveport and University Health Conway in Monroe did not submit those expenses for reimbursement. “We didn’t do that. We pay our rent every month,” he said.

He sees the CMS and Louisiana coming to some sort of agreement, but he expects the parent company of University Health, the Biomedical Research Foundation, not to be affected. “We are not part of that,” Huebbers said. “They’re carving us out because we weren’t part of it. It’s nothing to do with Shreveport and Monroe.”

BRF owns University Health Shreveport and the old E.A Conway Hospital in Monroe. Little has changed, Huebbers said. “We’re delivering the same services, the same doctors; we’re just a different owner.”

The nurses at University Health work for University Health, but the doctors are still employed by the LSU system. They offer contract services to patients through the hospital. The physicians still work with the medical school as they have in the past, since those programs are unaffected by the new ownership.

The changes came about because Louisiana wanted to maintain health care for residents and save money. The plan called for finding private companies to take over the services that the state’s charity hospital system had been providing. BRF took over the former LSU Health Science Center hospital in the fourth quarter of 2013 and has been operating it ever since.

Huebbers said there are three separate boards that oversee the North Louisiana hospital operations. Shreveport and Monroe each have a community board that supervises their respective facilities. The BRF Hospital Holding Company board oversees the Shreveport and Monroe Hospital Governing boards. He said the boards help chart strategic direction of the hospitals and are not directly involved in day-to-day operation.

The current health-care climate has created some new challenges for healthcare providers, Huebbers said, but the goal for BRF remains providing care for everyone in the community. “That includes the indigent folks, the Medicaid folks, as well as the person who has great insurance. That’s always been the history and the mission of the hospital. That’s something that we need to preserve and protect and to continue to move forward,” he said.

Huebbers is bringing a great amount of upper level medical center experience with him to his new post on Kings Highway. He was president of the Detroit Medical Center, a $3 billion facility serving a population of approximately 3 million. He’s also worked in San Antonio and with the Inova Health System in northern Virginia.

“I’ve been lucky enough to be part of teams that have really world-class physicians and medical care. I see the same thing here, even more so,” he said.

That potential is only part of the reason Huebbers returned to the South to take the helm of University Health. “I just decided that I wasn’t sure that I wanted to run a $3 billion organization [like Detroit Medical Center]. I wanted to have a nice little health system, but I also wanted to get involved in the community that I lived in.”

He believes he’ll have the opportunity in this area. He said University Health might be a surprise to local residents who aren’t aware of the changes that have been going on there in recent years. As part of his orientation to the new position, Huebbers has been meeting with department heads of the various clinical divisions of the system.

“I’ve been listening to some of the programs and services they offer. It is amazing. If I were to look down the road, I’d really see us positioned on not just a regional and state basis or even a multistate or national basis. It’s world-class medicine,” he said.

Huebbers said the facility attracts patients from all over the nation, even the world because it offers services that are not available in many places, or even anywhere else. His concern is that most of the local community isn’t even aware of what University Health has and is accomplishment.

“We need to tell the world that right in your own back yard you’ve got a worldclass medical center. I think a lot of people think of it as where the poor people go. It’s where everybody goes,” he said.

Huebbers said the community’s lack of understanding about University Health’s contribution to health care is what has surprised him most in his short time here. “You’ve got a big city, world-class medical center in a relatively small community,” he said. “When you look at the facilities that provide that world-class medicine, they’re generally in much bigger cities. Here you’ve got a great little community and an amazing medical center. I think people would be surprised to find the programs that we have in their own backyard.”

As for his personal side, Huebbers said he loves the South, having spent three years in San Antonio and is happy to be back. “It’s like they say about Texas: I wasn’t born there, but I got there as quick as I could.”

– Joe Todaro