BATON ROUGE - State health officials announced a variety of collaborations Monday intended to fight waste, fraud and abuse in agency programs, and pledged to reduce overdose deaths among pregnant women.

LDH top brass, including Surgeon General Ralph Abraham, Secretary Bruce Greenstein and Undersecretary Drew Maranto spoke. Abraham said that contact tracers handling the first reported measles case in the New Orleans area learned about one older measles case while examining the current patient’s contacts. He said the older case is not communicable now.

The group explained the agency's reinforced plans to make sure that public money is well spent.

A new task force will involve collaboration with other government entities, including cross-referencing information from the Office of Motor Vehicles to make sure Louisiana Medicaid recipients don't have driver's licenses in other states. 

A collaboration with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette will use artificial intelligence for state-specific data analysis. The health department's Program Integrity Unit also will work with the attorney general's office to identify potentially problematic billing patterns.

The health department also announced that it will move away from a single pharmacy benefits manager for the Medicaid program, in hopes of improving the efficiency of that process.

Louisiana also hopes to dramatically reduce maternal deaths from accidental drug overdoses, which have become the leading cause of maternal deaths.

Dr. Pete Croughan, LDH deputy secretary, outlined a successful program that has reduced maternal deaths from accidental opioid overdose in at Our Lady of the Angels in Bogalusa.

Using its processes, the state plans to reduce overdose deaths in pregnant women by 80 percent in three years, he said.

Croughan introduced Rachel Hernandez, who talked about her addiction, pregnancy and recovery.

Hernandez said she’s a 29-year-old recovering addict and the mother of a 4-year-old daughter. She credited the program at Our Lady of the Angels for her and her daughter’s lives.

She said she had lost her job, home, family, vehicle and phone because of her addiction and was sleeping in parks and public restrooms.

“I was completely hopeless,” she said. “I had nothing.”

Then she found out she was pregnant as a result of an unhealthy relationship. She also was told by others that seeking help for her addiction would result in her losing custody of her child, making her afraid to get medical care. She said she was trapped and “completely lost.”

She was arrested and taken to a hospital, where she expected to face stigma and judgment for being a drug-addicted, homeless pregnant woman. She wore a black and white striped prison uniform, was in handcuffs and had deputies with her.

The doctor “started talking to me like I was normal,” which hadn’t happened in a long time, she said.

In that encounter, she found a safe space, respect and accurate information about how to manage her pregnancy and her addiction to avoid dangerous withdrawal that could harm her unborn child.

She was treated with withdrawal-prevention medications and had a smooth labor and delivery. Her daughter had to be weaned off the medication after she was born.

Medical staff kept her informed about that process and her daughter’s health. Today she is sober and she and her daughter are thriving, she said.