BATON ROUGE - Nearly $6 million in state-owned hospital equipment can't be located, and millions more bought for the recently-opened New Orleans public hospital hasn't been tracked properly.

That's according to an audit released Monday from the Legislative Auditor's Office that looked at the LSU Health Care Services Division for the fiscal year ended June 30.

Most of LSU's hospitals were privatized by Gov. Bobby Jindal, with the facilities and equipment leased by private hospital managers.

The audit says more than $15 million in equipment bought for the new University Medical Center in New Orleans wasn't properly recorded and tagged by the state before it was turned over to the hospital operator.

Meanwhile, auditors say other equipment can't be found.

LSU responded that it is working to find and properly tag the items.