Clinic hosts ribbon cutting

Acadia St. Landry Hospital finally hosted the ribbon cutting ceremony for its Wound Clinic, an event that was delayed by just about a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr. Ty Hargroder, M.D., chief of staff at hospital and medical director of the wound clinic, said, “I came to Cindy (Walters, hospital CEO) about a year and a half ago, two years ago and said, ‘I came to Church Point 30 years ago to eventually retire just to Church Point, slow my practice down, knew what it would be, getting at that age, and said, You interested in a wound clinic?’ Her eyes lit up like that because I didn’t know they had done a survey, and that people in this community wanted a (wound) clinic.”
The event was held March 2 outside the clinic’s entrance on the northwest side of the hospital. Pastor Berl Adams of First Baptist Church gave the blessing, and Walters read a blessing from Père David Rozas with Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church.
Church Point Mayor Ryan “Spanky” Meche, Church Point council members Errol “Slu” Comeaux and Christine Semien as well as other elected officials from Rayne and St. Landry Parish were on hand for the event.
“This is a great, great occasion because it’s one more business that’s in town,” Meche said. “If everybody knows me, I am business driven. Businesses drive this community, and the hospital is a driving force in this community. We are growing by leaps and bounds, and Church Point appreciates it.”
ASLH CEO Cindy Walters said, “(The clinic) It’s just one of the many services that are being offered here at the hospital. We thank you for coming out.”
Walters also thanked the hospital’s board of commissioners as well as Hargroder for working with her to open the clinic.
Hargroder, who specializes in family medicine as well as hyperbarics and advanced wound care, said “This clinic is like no other in state. I have been doing this work for 25 years. We are a critical access hospital which basically means we are cost reimbursed. I can use tissue substitute graphs that we used to use in all the clinics. I can use them on Medicare patients, I can use them on Medicaid patients, (and) I can use them on private patients. These are things that other centers can’t use because they are not cost based. We are taking Medicaid patients who for the most part you can’t do a whole lot with fancy graphs, and we’re putting on these very expensive but very functional graphs and saving limbs.
“The other thing that we do that other area clinics don’t do is we provide diabetic foot service. I basically bring my diabetics in here every three months, and we examine them for corns, calculus, (and) bad nails. We trim all these up, we advise them on good shoewear, (and) we send them back to their primary care physicians to get the prescriptions for the shoewear.”
Hargroder thanked his staff and the hospital’s staff.
“It’s been one year that the worst thing has ever happened to a doctor, and that’s having a disease that you can’t fix,” he sad. “I will tell you, my personal staff and the hospital staff never once wavered in caring for patients. Scared as the dickens walking into a room with a coughing, sick patient you knew had COVID, not having the right protective equipment, because we didn’t know what it was, and they stood side by side with me.”