Our Lady of the Lake Health Celebrates 10-Year Anniversary of LSU Partnership

April 28, 2023

Expanding access to care, maintaining medical education programs, expanding research and improving trauma care have all been focus areas of decade-long partnership.

BATON ROUGE, LA – Our Lady of the Lake Health celebrated the 10-year anniversary of its public-private partnership with LSU today with an internal event at Our Lady of the Lake North. 

Organizational leadership and Our Lady of the Lake team members gathered in the Willie F. Hawkins Community Center to commemorate the 10 years since Our Lady of the Lake and LSU signed a cooperative endeavor agreement to transition patient care and medical education programs from Earl K. Long Medical Center. The intimate ceremony brought together dozens of individuals who were part of the transition in 2013 to reflect on the accomplishments of the past decade while looking forward to future progress.

“Today is a day for us to take pride in the combined work of these two organizations, who have worked together over the past 10 years to help improve healthcare in Baton Rouge,” said Chuck Spicer, Our Lady of the Lake Health President. “The past 10 years are just the beginning of what we know we can accomplish when we work together. We remain focused on continuing to improve access to care for all residents, training the next generation of healthcare professionals, and making an impact with the world-class research conducted right here in Louisiana.”  

Since the partnership began in April 2013, Our Lady of the Lake and LSU have worked together to help elevate healthcare in the Capital Region, focusing on expanding access to care, driving new research, improving trauma care and expanding graduate medical education. In that time, Our Lady of the Lake has dramatically improved procedure and pharmacy wait times for patients of the community, while also connecting a backlog of more than 1,200 former Earl K. Long patients to primary care providers.

The agreement led to the construction of LSU Health – North Campus in 2013, which included an urgent care and primary care clinic. In November 2017, the campus expanded to include an ER and was rebranded as Our Lady of the Lake North, becoming one of the only facilities in the country to contain an ER, primary care and urgent care in the same building, bringing multi-layered healthcare access to the community.

The partnership was also a vital component to Our Lady of the Lake receiving a Level I Trauma designation by the American College of Surgeons (ACS) in August 2022, making it the first and only trauma center in the Capital Region and one of three in the state to receive the prestigious distinction. Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital also became the region’s first pediatric trauma center to receive a Level II verification in December 2022.

Our Lady of the Lake and LSU have used the partnership to transform Baton Rouge into a hub for medical research and emerging technologies, with world-class, transformative research being conducted in areas such as sepsis diagnosis and patient mobility programs. This emphasis on research has helped spark life-saving discoveries in healthcare technologies and treatment, while also attracting top-flight physicians and providing local patients with access to cutting edge clinical trials.

Training future providers in the community has been another key driver behind the partnership. Our Lady of the Lake’s relationship with LSU helps recruit, train and sustain talented physicians, many of whom remain in the area to practice after finishing their training. Over the past 10 years, the partnership has led to a growing number of medical students in increasingly diverse fields receiving their training at Our Lady of the Lake. This arrangement also improves the level of care the community receives, with patients having access to a wide array of specialty services and providers.