Access, AI and an aging population: ‘Business Report’ examines the state of Capital Region health care

Louisiana’s health care industry is contending with a convergence of pressures—an aging population, workforce shortages, access gaps and rapid technological change—and Business Report’s annual Trends in Health Care edition examines how Capital Region providers are responding.

Here’s what you’ll find:

• AI is reshaping how care is delivered across the Capital Region. Area health care organizations detail where the technology is already producing results—and how they are making sure it doesn’t move faster than they can manage.
• There is no clinic. Nest Health, co-founded by former state health secretary Rebekah Gee, brings doctors, social workers and dietitians directly to patients’ front doors—at no additional cost to Medicaid-covered families. The company now serves roughly 30,000 patients across Louisiana and Arizona, with eight more states in its sights.
• Cancer doesn’t wait, and neither are Mary Bird Perkins and Ochsner Cancer Center. Both organizations are pushing services deeper into rural and underserved communities through mobile screening, telehealth and clinic expansions—and Ochsner’s partnership with Houston’s MD Anderson is raising the standard of care without requiring patients to leave the state.
• Louisiana’s population is getting older, fast. Health system executives and clinicians break down what that means for an industry already stretched thin—from primary care shortages and Medicare reimbursement gaps to a surge in dementia care demand with no easy solutions in sight.
• The Baton Rouge Health District is moving from vision to execution. As it enters its second decade, the district is launching a workforce training program that drew more than 1,200 applicants for 100 positions and building out a research infrastructure that could put Baton Rouge on the map for large-scale clinical trials.
• In our annual roundtable, regional health executives speak candidly about what’s working, what isn’t and what Louisiana health care must accomplish in the next three to five years—on AI, Medicaid vulnerability, behavioral health and the access gaps that continue to define the state’s biggest challenges.

Get all the 2026 Trends in Health Care content here.