Surgical Facility is Approved

              The Times
Thursday, January 15, 1981
Surgical facility is approved
By SALLY REESE
Times Medical Writer
A Health Systems Agency committee
gave its blessings to one but not the
other of two separate proposals for
freestanding ambulatory surgical
facilities here Wednesday.
The application for construction of
Shreveport Surgical Center for minor
surgery failed with the project review
committee of the Northwest Subarea
Advisory Council, North Louisiana
HSA, in a chaotic meeting at Sheraton
Inn in Bossier City.
The application for Same Day Sur-gery
Center faired better. The commit-tee
will recommend approval by the
HSA board of governors.
Same Day Surgery Center is the
$427,722 baby of Patrick Gandy, former
executive director of Physicians and
Surgeons Hospital. He has leased space
in the new T.K. Thomas office plaza at
Line and Olive for one-day surgery
services.
The controversial concept, called the
wave of the medical future by its propo-nents,
drew formidable opposition from
local hospitals and the Northwest
Louisiana District of the Louisiana
Hospital Association. It also had some
heavy support from the medical pro-fession.
Hospital administrators said the pro-posed
surgical facilities would
duplicate services already available at
the full-service hospitals.
Dr. Wallace Brown, surgeon, Dr. John
P. Valiulis, plastic surgeon, and Dr.
Paul Clark, oral surgeon, joined Dr. Ben
B. Singletary in arguing the need for
ambulatory surgical centers as an
alternative health delivery system.
Singletary, an obstetrician-gynecologist,
was the spokesman for
the investor group (mostly doctors) con-cerned
with the proposed Shreveport
Surgical Center.
Valiulrs said the outpatient depart-ments
of the general hospitals were not
set up to give "that specific service."
Robert C. Hall, LSU Hospital ad-ministrator
speaking as president of the
Northwest District, LHA, said that
while such facilities would not provide
any services not now available they
would draw off patient population with
the result that patient costs would be
spread over a smaller base.
Later, when Gandy challenged a com-mittee
member's vote on the basis of
conflict of interest, a spokesman of-fered
to withdraw the district's resolu-tion.
The committeeman is a member of
the district association.
Jim Elrod, president of Willis-
Knighton Medical Center, said his con-cerns
were unnecessary duplication of
services, quality of care, and health
care costs. He wanted to know if the
centers intended to rely on the hospitals
for crises — "when a patient 'goes
bad.'"
Joel McKissick, administrator of the
Northeast Louisiana Surgical Center at
Monroe, said freestanding centers re-quired
their doctors to be on the admit-ting
staff of a hospital. However, he
said, his own center has had about 5,000
surgery cases since August. 1978. and
there had been none requiring crisis
care.
Advocates said one-day surgery is
less costly because there would not be
any overnight stays with their attendant
costs. Gandy said costs would be at least
10 percent less than the hospitals
charge for the same services.