Louisiana hospital seeks money to build

St. Charles Parish Hospital in Louisiana is seeking voter approval to borrow $11.5 million to refinance existing bonds and build a 10,000-square-foot emergency room. Federico Martinez, the hospital's administrator, has said the emergency room at the 59-bed hospital has six times the traffic per bed as the national average, and that many patients leave without being seen. The national average for emergency-room traffic is 2,000 annual visits per bed. The St. Charles hospital gets 12,000 visits, he said.