Timeline for new academic medical center presented
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The state has begun purchasing property for a new academic medical center in New Orleans, a top LSU official told a state House budget subcommittee Tuesday.
Construction is expected to start in November 2010, LSU System Vice President Fred Cerise said.
As chief of health care and medical education at LSU, Cerise laid out an aggressive timeline that would lead to completion of the $1.2 billion project by late 2013 with a May 9, 2014, move-in date.
“We are still on that timeline despite the issues we have been struggling with,” Cerise said.
A dispute over how the academic medical center, which would be run by a nonprofit corporation, would be governed stalled the purchase of property earlier this year. Also, lawsuits were filed to block construction by historic preservationists and others who favor renovating and upgrading the old Charity Hospital, which has been closed since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The academic medical center complex would include a 424-bed hospital, ambulatory care building and parking structure on the same campus as a new Veterans Affairs’ hospital.
The site is off Claiborne Avenue between Canal Street and Tulane Avenue.
“We are well into assembling the property,” Cerise said.
LSU Health Sciences Center-New Orleans Chancellor Larry Hollier said the new academic medical center is important to the future of health care in Louisiana.
“Louisiana traditionally, historically has been a state that trained its own physicians,” Hollier said. “But that system is now broken. … We no longer have an academic teaching hospital in New Orleans that was the magnet for students to come here.”
Funding for the project remains an issue, Cerise said. The state already has earmarked $300 million for the project. Another $492 million is built into the financing plan from FEMA for storm damage that shuttered Charity Hospital. The remainder is to be financed through private borrowing.
The FEMA reimbursement has been the subject of a dispute with the federal agency claiming the state is owed no more than $150 million.
But Cerise said a recent state decision to go to federal arbitration to resolve a dispute should speed up a final determination from which decisions are made. The state should have an answer by February or March, he said.
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