New Orleans East Hospital CEO aims to meet patients ‘where they are’

It’s clear that Dr. Takeisha Davis sees her mission going beyond treating people who are sick or in need of emergency care.

Davis is the president and CEO of New Orleans East Hospital, part of the LCMC Health system. The hospital opened in 2014, bringing acute care back to its community after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina nearly a decade earlier. Davis has led the hospital for more than 10 years, and she previously served as assistant state health director in the Louisiana Department of Health.

Trained as a pediatrician, Davis tells Chief Healthcare Executive® that her background in population health helps inform her leadership and her desire to do more than just treat illnesses and wounds.

“You're looking at not just the individual patient that you're responsible for taking care of in the emergency department or clinic, but really are looking at the health of a community overall, and the health of the community is so important in a community hospital setting,” Davis says.

“I think the public health lens has helped me to see that when a patient comes into our emergency department for the third time with their diabetes, to think more than just about, yes, I have to make sure that that patient's blood sugar comes down. But then I start to think about what are all of the other ways that the community is impacting their inability to get the care that they need,” she adds.

In a recent interview, Davis talks about leading a safety net hospital in a community with glaring needs, efforts to address those drivers of health, and her concerns about the impact of Medicaid cuts in the next several years.

Davis says she wants to meet patients “right where they are, give them the care right where they need it, which might not be in the four walls of my hospital.”

‘More than just screenings’

New Orleans East is based in a community with high rates of poverty, food insecurity, and a lack of easy transportation. Noting those challenges, Davis says she is focused on tackling some of those challenges.

“It's starting to bring into the four walls of direct health care, the community health care piece and public health lens, and helping us to improve not just the health of that individual, but our entire community,” she says.

New Orleans East sits on an island, and many of those visiting the hospital need to cross a bridge. Since some residents don’t have easy access to the hospital or clinics, the hospital sends mobile teams in two vans into the community. It’s part of a partnership with the Louisiana Department of Health and Johnson & Johnson.

Over the past year, the mobile vans have been to 150 locations for screenings and other services.

“We like to pride ourselves in providing more than just screenings in education, but really connecting them back to care, whether that is to a primary care provider, or a cardiologist or a diabetic nurse educator, but making sure that we can get them the care that they need, and having the community health workers follow up on what the barriers may be to getting into those appointments,” Davis says.

The hospital has also set up a novel program to train some of the culture bearers of New Orleans, including musicians and artists, to serve as community health workers.

The goal is to engage residents who aren’t regularly getting care, with hopes that trusted faces could make a difference.

“We take our world-renowned musicians and poets and artists, and have them go through a course on community health workers and health care at one of our local community colleges and get certified as community health workers,” she says.

“It does a couple of things for us,” Davis says. “It provides a trusted voice in those communities to provide health education. It also allows them to be seen as a health ambassador and connect those who like to follow them for the artistic work that they share, but also to follow them into the healthcare world, and then provides an access to someone to ask questions to in plain language.”

Davis emphasizes the importance of using plain language with patients, and that’s stressed in the hospital and surrounding clinics as well.

“We know that as physicians, sometimes we speak in a language that isn't as clear and understandable to our community, and that's something that we have to work on,” Davis says.

“And so when we talk about health literacy, it's not just about the literacy levels and understanding of our community members, but also our ability to be able to communicate in plain language,” she continues. “We're not saying hypertension, but saying high blood pressure, things that people can understand that makes sense.”

Medicaid cuts

Many hospitals and health systems are making plans to deal with cuts in Medicaid over the next decade. Millions of Americans are expected to lose coverage, and Medicaid programs may be looking to reduce services or cover fewer people, industry analysts say.

Davis says she’s worried about the impact of Medicaid cuts in New Orleans, her hospital and the LCMC system. At New Orleans East, more than 60% of patients are covered by Medicaid or Medicare.

When some automatic Medicaid renewals expired after the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana found themselves without coverage. Since 2023, nearly 500,000 people in Louisiana have lost Medicaid coverage, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

“A lot of times they don't even know that they no longer have Medicaid until they show up in the emergency room or for their clinic visit,” Davis says.

Like other healthcare leaders, Davis is worried about the impact of new work requirements for Medicaid taking effect next year, as well as increased eligibility checks. As many as five to 10 million Americans could lose coverage from Medicaid in 2028, according to a report released last month by the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

As patients lose coverage, more will show up at the hospital’s emergency department for care, she says.

“We are here and committed to providing care, whether it be emergent or ‘well care,’ not just sick care, to our communities,” Davis says. “But it's going to put a strain on what care we can provide.”

She says she’s concerned about the hospital, and other hospitals, having to make “tough decisions” about the nature of services that they provide.

Davis says she worries about safety net hospitals, such as New Orleans East, being able to stay open.

“We are watching closely and advocating for ways in which safety net hospitals like ours can be protected, as we see these changes in Medicaid, because we are providing safety net care to community members who otherwise would not have access to it,” Davis says.

Davis says she wants to make sure that the hospital provides essential services, and also continues efforts to help improve the health of the community. She says that could involve more work with payers and community partners in areas such as prevention and programs to improve maternal health.

“We’re going to have to continue to do that, and have those partnerships with payers, and understanding how we can bring down the cost of care while improving care for our community members,” Davis says. “But at the same time, while we're doing that, we will have to make tough decisions, and we've had to make them before.”

• Read more: With Medicaid cuts, a Louisiana hospital system braces for big impact