Press: Plan for new hospital . . .

This is a great sign of growth and potential new professional audiences for Broadway South, only a mfew blocks away!

Roger Wilson

Plan for new hospital calling for $1.2 billion
Critics blast expense, size of LSU proposal

BATON ROUGE -- The future New Orleans health-care market will be able to accommodate a 484-bed Louisiana State University teaching hospital that would cost more than $1.2 billion to build, according to a long-awaited business plan that drew immediate fire from critics who say the state needs to move away from the charity system model.

The size and cost of the proposed hospital, which would serve as the main teaching hub for LSU and Tulane University medical students and post-graduate residents, far exceed any previous estimates.

The authors of the business plan said the size of the hospital is critical to its financial success, as it needs to be big enough to draw the private-pay and Medicare patients who are critical to a healthy bottom line. If the state builds a smaller hospital, as some have proposed, the beds would be filled with indigent patients and the hospital would have trouble generating enough cash to pay off its construction bonds, according to the plan.

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Credit: Times-Picayune on-line and NOLA.COM