Two steps forward. One step back.
Or maybe it’s one step forward and two steps back.
We used those words in Friday’s story to describe the healthcare roller coaster that has become Northern Louisiana Medical Center. But after everything this community has witnessed over the past year, the problems facing local healthcare have become about something much bigger than deficiencies, supplies, administrators or even the hospital itself.
They’re about trust. Or lack thereof.
And the Lincoln Parish Journal no longer believes Lincoln Parish can begin to regain confidence in Northern Louisiana Medical Center or Green Clinic as long as Rock Bordelon owns them.
We don’t reach that conclusion lightly.
We want NLMC to succeed. We want Green Clinic to succeed. We have written it many times before: Lincoln Parish needs them to succeed.
And let’s make something perfectly clear, again. This editorial isn’t directed at the doctors, nurses, technicians and other healthcare professionals working at those facilities.
There are good people inside those buildings — people who live here, raise their families here and care deeply about their patients and this community. They deserve our respect and support, as well as the resources necessary to do their jobs.
But they can’t fix what we believe is the biggest problem facing the two institutions.
Trust.
The proverbial water has been poisoned.
And this isn’t simply the opinion of an online media outlet.
The numbers provide additional evidence. Nearly half of Lincoln Parish patients seeking inpatient care in 2024 traveled outside the parish, primarily to Monroe and Shreveport. NLMC’s share of the Lincoln Parish inpatient market declined from 52% in 2021 to 44% in 2024.
Those numbers should concern anyone who cares about the future of healthcare in Lincoln Parish.
And that study was completed before many of the problems we’ve reported during 2026.
We’ve since seen serious deficiencies identified by state and federal regulators, plans of correction and repeat surveys. We’ve seen services placed on diversion and another change in the CEO’s office, with Monica Adams resigning for personal and family reasons after less than three months on the job.
Then came this past week.
On Thursday, NLMC informed local physicians and healthcare providers that it was curtailing some services because of a shortage of medical supplies. Interim CEO Arnie Young said the hospital was experiencing a “significant decline in available supplies” and was limiting certain services to ensure enough supplies were available to safely care for urgent and emergent patients.
Friday morning, Young told the Lincoln Parish Journal that supplies were arriving daily and NLMC was working with vendors to address the shortage. By 2 p.m. Friday, NLMC announced all diversions had been lifted and the hospital was “fully supplied and fully operational.”
That’s good news.
But the episode was another reminder of the uncertainty that has surrounded NLMC during a year when confidence was already in short supply.
This has become a regional healthcare issue as more and more residents from Lincoln Parish head north, south, east and west looking for their healthcare services, especially when it comes to ER and in-patient care.
And that brings us right back to trust.
Public trust can’t be restored with a press release, a new CEO or even by correcting deficiencies on a government survey. Those things matter greatly, but improvement and public confidence in that improvement are two different things.
This summer, the Lincoln Parish Journal published an editorial calling on Bordelon to make himself available to the people of Lincoln Parish and answer their questions.
We believed residents deserved to hear directly from the owner about what had gone wrong, what was being done to fix it and, perhaps most importantly, what his game plan was for the future of NLMC and Green Clinic.
Crickets.
No public forum. No town hall. No Rock Bordelon.
That was an opportunity for Bordelon to stand before this community, answer difficult questions and begin the process of rebuilding some of the confidence that had already been lost.
He didn’t take it. And now, in our opinion, it’s simply too late.
Trust can’t be rebuilt from a distance. A community can’t be asked to believe in its healthcare institutions while their owner remains largely invisible in a time of turmoil to the people whose confidence he needs.
A lot has changed at NLMC. The owner hasn’t.
Ownership comes with responsibility.
We aren’t suggesting Bordelon personally caused every problem that has occurred at NLMC or Green Clinic. That’s neither our argument nor our point.
Our point is that his continued ownership has become an obstacle to restoring public confidence in two healthcare institutions that are vitally important to Lincoln Parish.
The employees can’t fix that. Another administrator can’t fix it. Another press release can’t fix it.
Lincoln Parish is already working toward its healthcare future. Hospital Service District No. 1 has been created. Community leaders are studying what services this parish needs, what it can support and what will be required to keep more patients from leaving Lincoln Parish for care.
We believe it’s time for ownership of NLMC and Green Clinic to become part of that change.
Rock Bordelon should sell Northern Louisiana Medical Center and Green Clinic and allow others to try to rebuild healthcare in Lincoln Parish.
The proverbial water has been poisoned.
It’s time for a new source.
This is an editorial from the publishers of the Lincoln Parish Journal (Malcolm Butler, Kyle & Judith Roberts).
