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Public Hospital to Reopen FEMA Funds to Pay for 200-Bed Start in New Orleans

Posted on: Saturday, 21 January 2006, 18:00 CST

By MARSHA SHULER

Public hospital to reopen

FEMA funds to pay for 200-bed start in New Orleans

LSU is proceeding with federally financed renovations to one of two New Orleans public hospitals that they declared total losses after Hurricane Katrina.

LSU will use $13.1 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to open 200 beds at the storm-damaged University Hospital one of two hospitals known as the Medical Center of Louisiana.

Getting the hospital open by at least the end of this year is critical to providing care for poor and uninsured patients in the New Orleans area.

Also important is keeping alive New Orleans-based medical training programs that produce many of the states doctors, nurses and other health professionals, LSU officials said Friday.

LSU officials discussed the development at a meeting of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget as well as at an LSU Board of Supervisors subcommittee meeting Friday.

We have never dealt with anything as serious as what we are dealing with today, said LSU Systems President William Jenkins. This is one time where failure is simply not an option.

Budget committee chairman Rep. John Alario, D-Westwego, said it is critical to get hospital services restored, noting that private hospitals are overloaded.

He said his constituents face 8-to-10-hour waits in the open hospitals, which are also encountering financial problems.

We could see the whole collapse of the medical system in the area, Alario said. We are obviously not out of the woods at all in this.

LSU has been scrambling to restart hospital-based medical care in the New Orleans area since Hurricane Katrina and flood waters inundated University and Charity hospitals.

Damage was so great that LSU officials decided to abandon the buildings and ask the federal government to finance a new facility.

Officials announced plans to contract with two private hospitals in the New Orleans area to open a trauma center and some medical- surgical beds. But negotiations have stretched out, with no contract yet signed and the health-care situation growing more critical.

In March medical school graduates will decide where they do their physician training or residency.

Signing up the doctors is critical for continued operation of LSUs medical school in New Orleans. Those doctors provide the bulk of health care to poor patients, LSU Health Sciences Center Chancellor Dr. Larry Hollier said.

It is very critical for us to get residents that we have a (hospital) building to show them that we are renovating actively and aggressively, Hollier said.

Prior to the hurricane, LSU planned to build a new hospital in New Orleans to replace the two aging facilities. LSU still wants to do that.

But the hospitals administrator said if sufficient residents dont sign up for medical training, that might end discussions on the subject.

There will be no need to build a hospital, period, because there will not be a medical school or residency program, said MCL administrator Dr. Dwayne Thomas.

Thats why LSU has taken FEMA up on an offer for money to renovate University Hospital, the newer of its hospitals.

LSU hospital system chief Don Smithburg said the $13.1 million FEMA commitment likely will not be enough to do the work. But he said he expects FEMA to come up with whatever extra dollars may be required.

Smithburg said contracts call for the renovations to be completed by June 30. But he warned that is optimistic and suggested years end may be more realistic.

Thomas said the contract has been approved for window repairs at University, and work for roof and electrical system repairs should be done in a week or two.

A contract with private hospital Oschners, to lease space for an emergency room and trauma center at its Elmwood Hospital, is imminent, Thomas said. It will take six weeks from the signing of the lease to complete renovations, he said, putting the opening into March.

Source: Advocate; Baton Rouge, La.

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