The emergency room at Baton Rouge General's Mid City campus will reopen to the public on Monday for the first time since it shut down in 2015 under the financial pressures of treating thousands of uninsured patients.

The revival of the 23,000-square-foot emergency room off Florida Boulevard is a boon for residents who live nearby in the city's poorest ZIP codes. The closure five years ago left the region's hospital beds concentrated in south Baton Rouge and led to increased EMS transport times.

The site is reopening with financial support from the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, which penned a contract with the hospital system at the end of March to set up an acute care hospital at the Mid City campus to manage an influx of coronavirus patients.

The 33-bed emergency room will open at 7 a.m. on Monday and will treat and assess emergencies of all kinds, from chest pains and broken bones to diabetes and strokes. The hospital has taken steps to ensure patients are protected from contracting the coronavirus.

“Don’t be afraid to come in for your medical care,” said Dr. John Jones, the facility’s director of emergency medicine. “You will be safe here.”

Edgardo Tenreiro, the chief executive officer of Baton Rouge General, said they're going to take the reopening a "day at a time, a month at a time and see how it works," but he's hopeful it will be sustainable in the long run given how much has changed in the region's health care landscape over the last five years. 

When the emergency room shut down in 2015, hospital administrators said it was losing nearly $2 million a month from treating high volumes of uninsured patients, many of whom turned to the site after the closure of the Earl K. Long charity hospital in north Baton Rouge two years earlier.  

At the time, 36% of the patients seen in Mid City's ER were uninsured.

With Gov. John Bel Edwards' decision in 2016 to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, the share of uninsured adults in East Baton Rouge Parish has roughly been cut in half from 13.2% in 2014 to 7.39% in 2018.

Another helpful change, Tenreiro said, was increased payments to health care providers who treat Medicaid patients. 

Mid City's ER was slated to reopen sooner, but the coronavirus pandemic tied up supply chains and Baton Rouge General had difficulty acquiring equipment for the unit, Tenreiro said. 

The facility will operate much like a freestanding ER, with the ability to triage a range of emergencies, but without an operating room on site or specialty care services. Unlike some facilities, Mid City has acute care units, and will be capable of admitting patients directly from its ER.

The closure of Mid City's ER in 2015 caused an uproar among local elected officials and community leaders, who said it left a swath of the city with no emergency room nearby.

For Rep. C. Denise Marcelle, D-Baton Rouge, whose district includes the hospital, the news of the reopening almost brought her to tears. She said Mid City saved her life 17 years ago when, just a few blocks away, her then-husband stabbed her in the heart.

“But for this hospital, I would not be here,” Marcelle said. “I’m ecstatic because this is my fabric, this is my neighborhood. I love Baton Rouge General Mid City and I no longer have to go across town.”

With a $5.5 million grant from the state, Our Lady of the Lake opened an ER in north Baton Rouge in 2017, but a disproportionate number of hospital beds remain in south Baton Rouge, out of reach to many who lack adequate transportation.

The communities living in ZIP codes adjacent to the hospital — including 70802, 70806 and 70805 — are some of the poorest in Baton Rouge, and experience significantly worse health outcomes than the rest of the parish, in part, due to limited access to adequate health care.

The ER's location off Florida Boulevard — with a CATS bus terminal just blocks away — means patients can easily access care by simply walking in.

“There’s a perception that the poor go to run-down facilities for care. I want to change that perception,” said Dr. Venkat Banda, the medical director for acute care at the Mid City campus. “This is going to be a five-star facility.”

The facility will have to be nimble in the months ahead, Banda said, in order to “morph into what the community wants it to be.”

The Mid City campus, which first opened in 1950, has always been "like the beacon in the middle of the city," serving patients from different backgrounds, Chelsea Bray, the director of nursing of the acute care units, said in April. "That's been the culture of Mid City: Bring all your sick, your weak, your weary, and we'll take care of them."

The contract Baton Rouge General signed with GOHSEP will keep the facility open for at least the next six months, with the possibility of an 18-month extension. A separate agreement stipulates that GOHSEP will reimburse the hospital up to $20 million for the costs expended during the term of the contract.

Email Blake Paterson at bpaterson@theadvocate.com and follow him on Twitter @blakepater