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Healthcare

Ascension Parish’s healthcare is growing quickly to accommodate its residents. Ascension has 25 critical-access hospital beds in Donaldsonville at Prevost Hospital. In addition to those hospital beds, Promise Hospital of Ascension in Gonzales has 55 certified, long-term, acute-care beds.

St. Elizabeth Hospital is a 78-bed, community hospital, employing more than 500 team members. The newly expanded and remodeled facility includes an expanded, state-of-the-art, 17-bed emergency department; a 16-bed heart monitoring unit; an intensive care unit; comprehensive x-ray services including MRI, CT, nuclear medicine, digital fluoroscopy, and digital mammography; respiratory therapy; inpatient and outpatient services. St. Elizabeth Hospital’s Surgical Services Department is newly expanded and remodeled with more operating rooms including all new equipment, and a new, expanded waiting area for families. The hospital provides orthopedic, urological, bariatric and plastic surgeries in addition to other general surgeries. The hospital also operates a new, state-of-the-art Ambulatory Surgery Center on its campus. St. Elizabeth Hospital’s patient rooms are newly enlarged and remodeled, and all are private.

St. Elizabeth Hospital is the recipient of the Louisiana Quality Foundation’s 2007 Louisiana Performance Excellence Award for the overall organizational quality, and the Louisiana Healthcare Review’s Gold Level Louisiana Hospital Quality Award.

A subsidiary of St. Elizabeth Hospital is St. Elizabeth Physicians, who serves the healthcare needs of the community with 35 highly qualified and credentialed physicians and eight nurse practitioners. The physicians of the practice represent endocrinology, family practice, inpatient medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, pulmonology, general surgery, and occupational health. The practice has clinics in Gonzales, Donaldsonville, Prairieville, Gramercy, and will soon open in Dutchtown. St. Elizabeth After Hours provides urgent/after-hours care in Gonzales and Prairieville, and the Occupational Health Clinic serves the occupational health needs of both industry and business in Ascension and the surrounding parishes.

In addition, Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, in partnership with St. Elizabeth Hospital, has just opened the door to superior cancer care in Ascension Parish. The new treatment facility features state-of-the-art technology, including a high-energy linear accelerator utilizing advanced image guided radiation therapy (IGRT); intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT); state-of-the-art imaging using positron emission tomography and computed tomography (PET/CT); sophisticated treatment planning, as well as physics and dosimetry quality assurance instrumentation and software.

All three of these facilities are accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) to ensure a high quality of patient care. There are approximately 500 employees between the three local facilities, and the parish now has approximately 100 local, active physicians in a multitude of specialties, who were previously only available 30 or more miles away.

Specialty procedures and services, state-of-the-art equipment and facilities are locally available and continue to improve quickly.

In addition to inpatient services, outpatient diagnostic testing continues to grow and improve, as most insurance companies guide patient care toward this cost-effective direction.

St. James Behavioral Health Hospital (SJBH) recently relocated from its former site of operations in St. James Parish to its new address at 3136 S. St. Landry Road in Gonzales. The hospital, which provides acute psychiatric care for adults 18 years and older, hosted an open house Wednesday evening, February 11, 2009 in recognition of the grand opening of their new 24-bed inpatient treatment facility. Conveniently situated off I-10 exit 177 near the Tanger Outlet Mall, the new hospital ideally positions SJBH to serve the adult psychiatric inpatient needs of the Baton Rouge, New Orleans and the River Parishes communities.

St. James Behavioral Health Hospital is dedicated to providing intensive, short-term inpatient psychiatric treatment for adult and geriatric patient populations.

Their highly qualified, professional staff is committed to providing compassionate, quality care within a serene and healing environment. Utilizing a patient-centered philosophy, the hospital’s treatment team of psychiatrists, psychologists, registered nurses, social workers, and milieu therapists provides the following general psychiatric treatment services:

group therapy, individual counseling, somatic therapy, activities therapy, social services, psychological services, psycho-educational services and dietary services.

There are a number of nursing homes, assisted living and adult day care facilities to serve our residents. Home health services, dentistry, orthodontics, physical therapy and infusion therapy are continually moving into the local communities.

In addition, there are local substance abuse resources available, medication assistance, a parish health unit in Gonzales and Donaldsonville and private sitter services.