Project Katrina

You don’t need no stinking teaching hospital New Orleans. Or at least that seems to be what the Federal government is tell Louisiana officials. LSU has been working for months with the Veteran Administration (VA) on a plan to build adjoining hospitals that would share common features such as a physical plant, food services, and laboratories

Congress has already allocated $600 million for the VA’s share of the project, but LSU has yet to allocate the $650 million for a 350-bed teaching hospital. From the Times-Picayune article.

The Bush administration is questioning the need for a new Louisiana State University teaching hospital to replace Charity Hospital in downtown New Orleans, state officials said Thursday, deepening a rift between Gov. Kathleen Blanco and the federal government over the restructuring of the region’s health-care system.

Blanco said questions about the new public hospital are creating a “wedge issue” for members of the Louisiana Health Care Redesign Collaborative who are trying to craft a broader overhaul plan for the health-care delivery and financing system in the New Orleans area.

The message was delivered to LSU officials this week by federal Gulf Coast recovery coordinator Donald Powell, according to university officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. They said any delay could jeopardize a nascent partnership between LSU and the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs to build two new hospitals in downtown.

The New Orleans, and therefore the regions health care system is in shambles. That a year later, when less then half of New Orleans pre-Katrina hospital are open, it is a crime the city can’t get the funding they need to move forward.