By KEVIN CHIRI

Editor and Publisher

LAPLACE – The new leader of the St. John Parish hospital has been announced as Lifepoint Hospitals, Inc. confirmed this week that Charlotte Dupre will take over as new CEO of River Parishes Hospital (RPH).

Dupre will officially begin her duties at RPH on July 23, and comes from her most recent position as CEO of Acadian Medical Center in Eunice, La.

Dupre completed a major task at that facility as she oversaw the construction of the new hospital, a state-of-the-art 52-bed facility. She guided the hospital to some of the top scores in the 52-hospital Lifepoint system, with high rankings in patient satisfaction, employee satisfaction and physician satisfaction.

In discussing her new position at River Parishes, Dupre revealed that her number one goal, and something Lifepoint has in the short term future, is to build a new hospital in St. John Parish.

&#8220It’s the reason I took the position, to see a new hospital built here,” she said. &#8220I am a person that needs to be challenged, and now that I have finished getting Acadian Medical Center constructed and running, I am looking forward to doing the same thing here.”

Dupre said that company officials have not made a firm decision on how soon the new hospital will be built in St. John, but she called it a &#8220short term goal” that will be accomplished here as soon as possible.

Dupre has an impressive background of experience at various health care facilities.

She was the COO at Martinsville Memorial Hospital, a 237-bed facility in Martinsville, VA. for over a year before staying nearly four years in Eunice.

Before that, she served from 1997 to 2002 as the administrator for Duke Center for Living at Duke University Medical Center. Her major accomplishment there was the turnaround of what had been a $3 million annual loss at that facility.

She also had served as executive director of Woman’s Health Services at Woman’s Hospital Foundation in Baton Rouge.

She originally went to college here in Louisiana, graduating from Tulane with a master’s in business administration, along with her bachelor of science degree from LSU, where she majored in business education and minored in journalism.

When she finished college, she taught school for six years before moving into the health care field in administration.

As for her plans for River Parishes Hospital, she views the satisfaction of the patients, employees and doctors as priority number one.

&#8220The satisfaction scores can always be better, and we want people coming to this hospital to find the experience as pleasant as possible, even though we know most people don’t want to come to a hospital other than having a baby,” she said.

In Eunice, the physician scores for her facility were the most improved in the Lifepoint system, and patient satisfaction was number one in the 52-hospital company.

&#8220I think the teacher in me helps in some of these areas,” she said with a smile. &#8220But ultimately we want to build a new hospital here. This hospital is 25 years old, and is just not state-of-art as we know people want now. I’m excited about the chance to oversee the project to get this done here.”

She believes the mere perception of a new hospital will encourage more local people to come here, as opposed to going out of the area for their health care needs. Additionally, St. James Hospital and St. Charles Hospital on either side of St. John are already in the midst of new hospital construction projects.

&#8220There is too much competition all around us,” she added. &#8220Half of the problem here is that we are just an older hospital. However our short term plans are to change that and build a new facility.”

Dupre is single with two children and two grandchildren.