Major Teaching Hospital - Ochsner Lafayette General Medical Center

Ochsner University Hospital & Clinics houses two hospital-based medical programs that provide primary care as well as acute services to the patients of Lafayette. The Family Medicine and Internal Medicine Programs serve the inpatient setting as well as clinics with highly dedicated medical staff faculty. Morning reports, grand rounds and learning conferences keep our physicians up to date with the latest care and treatment plans. Ochsner University Hospital & Clinics also provides multiple specialty services with Board-certified medical staff working alongside our physicians sharing expertise and experiences to develop an individualized plan of care for patients.

Advantages of a Teaching Hospital/Academic Center

• Teaching hospitals are well known for improving the health of the communities they serve
• The academic setting encourages a team approach to patient care
• Highly trained medical staff teaching future generations assure health promotion for years to come

In tandem, the two teaching hospitals aim to make Lafayette a prestigious destination for young, upcoming doctors. With this partnership, the teaching component makes these two hospitals important to insurers and attractive to companies that pursue medical research and innovation. The teaching component also makes it attractive to surrounding communities because residents are more likely to practice within 100 miles of their training hospital. Today, Ochsner University hospital & Clinics and Ochsner Lafayette General Medical Center jointly support the following residency programs: anesthesia, family medicine, internal medicine, ophthalmology, orthopedics, otolaryngology and general surgery. Ochsner University Hospital & Clinics also offers fellowships in cardiology, geriatrics, sports medicine and urogynecology.

Having two major teaching hospitals to serve South Louisiana allows these facilities to target overall population health and diseases specific to this part of the country. This can influence the types of clinics the hospitals will establish, and the types of physicians that need to be recruited to this region.

For the purposes of recognition as a major teaching hospital in graduate medical education, a facility must pay for all costs of the training program, including salaries and benefits, a portion of the cost of the teaching physicians’ salaries and benefits attributable to medical education, and other administrative costs of the program. The program also calls for specified residency requirements and approval by the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). The ACGME uses Review Committees to evaluate and monitor the performance, board scores, curriculum and structure of a program. It is their mission to improve health care by assessing and advancing the quality of a resident’s training through accreditation.

Ochsner Lafayette General is committed to growing additional residency programs. This means we will continue to train residents and expand partnerships with surrounding medical education facilities to attract and retain the best health care practitioners to the Lafayette area.