By Malcolm Butler
Lincoln Parish residents received some promising news late Monday as Allegiance Health Management officially announced that it plans to divest Northern Louisiana Medical Center as part of the planned sale of four of its Louisiana hospitals.
The Bossier City-based healthcare management company announced that NLMC, Minden Medical Center, Acadian Medical Center in Eunice and Mercy Regional Medical Center in Ville Platte are included in the planned divestitures.
The announcement comes three days after the Webster Parish Journal first reported that Minden Medical Center CEO Keith Cox had confirmed Allegiance would divest itself of the Minden facility. The report also identified NLMC and the two other hospitals as part of the planned divestiture.
Allegiance CEO Scott W. Prouty said Monday in the press release that the company will work with the communities and potential new owners during the process.
“We are committed to working closely with the communities we serve and with the potential new owners throughout this process to ensure a seamless transition,” Prouty said. “Our highest priority is protecting the delivery of quality healthcare services and ensuring that patients, employees, physicians and the communities these hospitals serve experience as little disruption as possible.”
Allegiance did not identify potential buyers or provide a timetable for the divestitures. The company said the planned transactions remain subject to customary processes and approvals, with additional information concerning potential new ownership and the timing of the transitions to be released when appropriate.
Friday, Lincoln Parish Hospital Service District No. 1 Chairman Jay Guillot told the Lincoln Parish Journal that local officials had already been working with the Louisiana Department of Health for months and were engaged with Allegiance in an informal process involving NLMC.
“We are in a process, working with Allegiance currently, an informal process, starting due diligence, to work towards establishing a value for the Northern Louisiana Medical Center,” Guillot said Friday. “We are having early provider discussions with an ultimate goal of seeing if we can bridge from the existing operator to a new operator, but there’s certainly a lot that has to happen between now and then.”
Guillot said there was no specific timeline but confirmed the ultimate goal was transitioning NLMC to a new operator while maintaining the hospital’s services and workforce.
“Maintaining the staff and the operations, the great staff that we have in this operation, is certainly a commitment, no matter what happens in the future relative to the sale or not sale of the hospital,” Guillot said.
The potential ownership change comes after more than two years of work by local leaders to evaluate the future of healthcare in Lincoln Parish.
The Lincoln Parish Police Jury created Hospital Service District No. 1 this summer following an extensive healthcare study commissioned by the Lincoln Health Foundation, City of Ruston and Police Jury.
The January 2026 North Central Louisiana Healthcare Planning Final Report, prepared by Whitecap Health Advisors, documented significant patient outmigration and concerns surrounding local healthcare. Nearly half of Lincoln Parish patients seeking inpatient care in 2024 traveled outside the parish, primarily to Monroe and Shreveport, while NLMC’s share of the Lincoln Parish inpatient market declined from 52% in 2021 to 44% in 2024.
The announcement also follows months of regulatory scrutiny at NLMC. State and federal regulators identified multiple deficiencies earlier this year, resulting in corrective action plans and repeat surveys. Hospital officials later said condition-level deficiencies had been cleared.
More recently, NLMC temporarily curtailed some services in September because of a shortage of medical supplies before announcing the following day that supplies had been restored and all diversions lifted.
Prouty said Allegiance intends to work with community leaders, hospital employees, medical staffs and prospective owners during the divestiture process to maintain continuity of care and access to healthcare services.
