Moss Regional Hospital Heliport

The heliport's closure is directly linked to the restructuring and eventual replacement of the hospital it served. In 2013, the state of Louisiana began privatizing its public charity hospital system. As part of this transition, Lake Charles Memorial Health System took over the management of W.O. Moss Regional Hospital. The hospital's emergency room was closed, and acute care services were consolidated at other facilities. Without an active emergency department to receive trauma patients, the heliport became obsolete. The old hospital building was later demolished around 2016 to make way for a new clinic.

The site of the former W.O. Moss Regional Hospital and its heliport is now occupied by the W.O. Moss Memorial Health Clinic, a modern outpatient facility that opened in 2015. The original hospital building and the ground-level concrete helipad have been completely removed. The area where the heliport was located is now part of the parking lot and landscaped grounds of the new clinic. The current facility does not operate an emergency room and therefore has no need for a heliport.

Moss Regional Hospital Heliport (73LA) was a private-use heliport that served as a critical piece of infrastructure for the W.O. Moss Regional Hospital. Its sole purpose was to support medical operations. The heliport was used by air ambulance services, such as Acadian Ambulance (Air Med), to rapidly transport critically ill or injured patients from accident scenes and rural areas throughout Southwest Louisiana to the hospital's emergency department. It also facilitated time-sensitive inter-hospital patient transfers. Its significance was rooted in its role in the regional Emergency Medical Services (EMS) network, reducing transport times and improving patient outcomes for a state-run charity hospital.

There are no known plans or prospects for reopening the heliport. The facility on the site has been fundamentally changed from a full-service hospital with an emergency room to an outpatient clinic. Re-establishing a heliport would require a complete reversal of this strategic change and the construction of a new emergency department, for which there are no public plans. Emergency air medical transports in the Lake Charles area are now directed to other major hospitals with active heliports, such as Lake Charles Memorial Hospital and CHRISTUS Ochsner St. Patrick Hospital.