HJBR Jul/Aug 2025

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE I  JUL / AUG 2025 59 For weekly eNews updates and to read the journal online, visit HealthcareJournalBR.com and innovation, and most recently served as exec- utive director. Also stepping into a key leadership role is David Darragh, who now serves as chief strategy officer. Since joining Team Gleason as managing direc- tor, David has led partnerships such as a collab- oration with Ochsner. Under his leadership, the foundation more than doubled in size over the past three years, significantly increased fundrais- ing, and secured vital federal and state funding to expand its programs on a national scale. Louisiana Department of Health Leadership Announces Key Initiatives The new Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH), Bruce Greenstein, announced three key initiatives on Monday to address sev- eral of the state’s most pressing healthcare challenges. These efforts also aim to ensure more stability in the programs the Department administers. The three initiatives make up a portion of the Department’s vision. The priorities include improving behavioral health, making the Louisi- ana Medicaid program more efficient, and dou- bling down to fight fraud, waste, and abuse while maintaining the highest standards of privacy and security of patients’ and members’ information. Fraud Waste and Abuse Task Force The Fraud Waste and Abuse Task Force will ini- tially target three key areas: 1. LDH/Office of Motor Vehicles (OMV) data- sharing partnership: LDH and OMV launch a data-sharing partnership starting April 23 to help improve the accuracy of the Medic- aid rolls. This will ensure that the state isn’t paying monthly premiums for individuals holding an active driver’s license in another state. 2. AI data project with the University of Lou- isiana at Lafayette (ULL): LDH is partner- ing with LA DOGE and ULL to use AI and data analytics to identify and address waste, abuse, and fraudulent practices within Lou- isiana Medicaid. 3. Enhanced collaboration between the LDH Program Integrity Unit and the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU): Enhanced collaboration with MFCU will increase LDH’s ability to detect, investigate, and prosecute fraudulent activ- ity and maximize recoveries for the Medic- aid program. Reforming Medicaid Pharmacy Benefit Manage- ment (PBM) The Department announced a new approach to the pharmacy program in Louisiana Medicaid. This will move LDH away from the single PBM toward a program that brings patients and pro- viders closer together. This policy change aims to reduce the impact of the middleman in the Louisiana Medicaid pro- gram. The Department will work closely with its frontline pharmacists and the managed care orga- nizations (MCOs) to ensure the best approach to managing pharmacy benefits. Continued closures of independent and chain pharmacies threaten patient access across Louisi- ana. As MCOs take on the responsibility of bene- ficiaries’ total healthcare, LDH will require them to operate a pharmacy program that ensures access, controls expenses, and safeguards the financial stability of the state’s Medicaid system. Project M.O.M. (Maternal Overdose Mortality) Recognizing the urgent crisis of accidental opi- oid overdose as the leading cause of pregnancy associated death, the Department is launching Project M.O.M., a statewide effort to reverse this trend across Louisiana. To better support mothers, Project M.O.M. will advocate for evidence-based opioid use disorder training for prescribers in hospitals and residency programs, increased availability of lifesaving med- ications like naloxone and buprenorphine in phar- macies, and the allocation of opioid settlement funds by local leaders to critical resources such as peer recovery coaching, residential treatment beds, and outpatient clinics. Building on the success of Louisiana pilots that place the opioid overdose reversal medication naloxone in mothers’ hands at discharge, boost universal substance-use screening in birthing hos- pitals, and link emergency department overdoses to rapid outpatient treatment, Project M.O.M. will scale those best practices across every region. The initiative sets a bold target of cutting preg- nancy-associated opioid overdose deaths by 80% within three years. This will save the lives of an estimated 65 mothers annually and protect infants from loss or foster care placement. LDH will pub- lish a detailed roadmap within 30 days, convene hospital and community partners within 90 days to enhance data tracking, and align managed- care and hospital incentive payments over the next six months to support access to treatment. Presidential Executive Order: DeliveringMost- Favored-Nation Drug Pricing to American Patients Editor’s Note: Please don’t skip over what is bur- ied in this story about this exciting Presidential Executive Order hopefully lowering drug pricing in the U.S. – it warrants national attention, and yet, almost no one is talking about it. According to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the pres- ident of the U.S. was given a “hundred million dollars from the pharmaceutical industry,” the secretary of Health and Human Services said, “there’s at least one pharmaceutical lobbyist for every congressman, every senator in Capitol Hill and every member of the Supreme Court; some estimates, three pharmaceutical companies, the industry itself spends three times what the next largest lobbyist spends on lobbying.” Pharmaceutical companies have done some extraordinary good. They’ve developed treat- ments that save lives and alleviate suffering. But that doesn’t justify the political power they now wield—or the willingness of politicians to accept it. Why does an industry meant to heal need to line the pockets of lawmakers? And why have we, as a citizenry, accepted a system so easily set up for influence by companies that make billions? Is this why we’re the most medicated population on Earth? In a press conference May 12th, President Trump issued an Executive Order that says he will get drug prices “down 60, 70, 80, 90%. But actu- ally more than that, if you think about it in the way mathematically.” He said he called Senate and House leaders, John Thune and Mike Johnson, to tell them they would have to “score that your cost for Medicaid and Medicare and just basically pharmaceuticals and drugs is going down at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” which will pay for the Golden Dome, to keep us safe. Trump continued, “So today, Americans spend 70% more for prescription drugs than we spent