Rotary refines its image and learns about hospitalization

Over the course of the Rotary Club of Ville Platte’s previous two meetings, club members heard from representatives of organizations who are in the business of caring for the needs of other people.
Last week, the Rotarians heard from Michelle Bergeron, who is the development director at Refinery Mission in Opelousas. She stated that the organization recently rebranded itself from being Lighthouse Missions.
According to Bergeron, the idea of rebranding came from Executive Director Johnny Carrier. “He had the concept that we are refining these men and restoring their identity and putting them back into society so that they can be productive again,” said Bergeron.
She continued, “We take in men from jails, prisons, rehabs, reentry programs, mental hospitals, and off the streets. If these people are willing and wanting to have some stability and some accountability, then we offer that service in between.”
Part of the Refinery’s service is extended to prisoners who have recently been released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. “We work with Louisiana Parole Project,” said Bergeron, “and a lot of these men are coming out of serving life sentences and have been in jail for 44 years. If they’ve been in jail for a year or 44 years, then sometimes they don’t know what technology is like nowadays. They don’t know how to get a job or write a resume, and that’s what our services offer.”
Bergeron explained that the Refinery has expanded from a small building to “a brand new facility that holds 64 men.” She added that the new building is at the same location on South Street in Opelousas.
“Where the garden used to be,” Bergeron said, “is where the new facility is. Where the men used to put the seeds and plant is now where they are reaping what they sowed, and now we have this beautiful new building.”
At this week’s meeting, the Rotary Club heard from Calvin Green, the new chief executive officer of Mercy Regional Medical Center in Ville Platte. Green stated that he got his undergraduate degree from Delta State University in Cleveland, Miss., where he played Division II college baseball. “We played mostly Division I schools,” he said, “so I got to pitch against Alabama, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, and Notre Dame. It was just an experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.”
Green, who confessed that he received his graduate degree from the University of Alabama, came to Ville Platte from the hospital in Many after Allegiance Health Management purchased Mercy Regional and Acadian Medical Center in Eunice.
As Green said, the company based in Shreveport “owns nine rural hospitals in Louisiana and three in Arkansas and has some psychiatric facilities in Texas and Mississippi.”
“I only see brighter futures for the hospital here and in Eunice,” he continued. “We are going to work hard to try to make that happen. We are here for one purpose and for one purpose only, and that’s to serve our patients and our community and try to make this community a better place to be.”
For Green, a way to continually better serve the patients is through the hospital staff. “I’ve been terribly impressed with the operations I’ve see thus far,” he commented. “You’ve got a good solid hospital in this community, and you got a lot of good folks who are healthcare professionals from the housekeeping and dietary staff to the medical staff.”
Green went on to comment that a way of improving on that is by bringing in new physicians with local ties to the community. He said, “We have a new pediatrician Dr. Ellis Landreneau who’s going to be starting in the second week of October. His wife Christina is a physician’s assistant, and she’s going to be working in the office with him.”
The new CEO also explained that the company is actively recruiting Noah Miller who also has local ties. “He’s in his first year of family medicine residency in Lake Charles,” said Green. “He’ll be finishing in June 2021, but now is the time to get our hooks in him because, in that last year of residency, everybody is going to be bombarding him with recruitment offers.”
To that point, Green added, “Then we’ll continue to look for individuals who have roots here and a reason to be here and a reason to stay here.”
While serving patients is the primary objective of Allegiance Health, serving the community is also important. “We want to return this hospital to being a community hospital,” expressed Green. “We want to be more involved than we had been in the past. We want to be involved in things that you expect your community hospital to be involved in.”
Earlier in the same meeting this week, Rotarian and Ville Platte Mayor Jennifer Vidrine announced that the city will be spraying this week for mosquitoes. “We’re going to spray on school campuses and on football fields specifically,” she said. “So, by Friday, those maringouins (French word for mosquitoes) can stop sucking the blood out of all of us.”
The mayor added, “It’s no more smoking truck. The most you will see is a mist in the air. You won’t see any white smoke where you can follow and run behind like we used to do. It was fun, but it was killing us at the same time.”
Rotarian and Executive Director of the Evangeline Chamber of Commerce Renee Brown also announced at this week’s meeting that DOTD (Department of Transportation and Development) will be hosting a public hearing in Lafayette on October 18 at 1:30 p.m. to address its Highway Priority Construction Program for 2019 and 2020.
“We might have to charter a bus to get everybody in Ville Platte to Lafayette so that we can move Highway 167 to the forefront of that priority list,” Brown said. “We want to make sure we have a good showing from Evangeline Parish. It also happens to be St. Landry Parish’s day at the same time, so maybe our parish governments collectively may have a chance to meet together and visit so that we’re prepared for October.”