"This management corporation has no money."

That interesting quote was uttered yesterday at the UMC Board Meeting (or UMCMC, University Medical Center Management Corporation). 

Much of the meeting featured somewhat pedantic input from a national consultant, whose appearance was funded by LSU, about different types of hospital arrangements. 

The continued discussion about what type of hospital to put on the site at this point in the game begs some huge questions.  For example, why have the state and its contractors expropriated and demolished property in a national historic district when they don't even know what type of hospital is going to be built?

Adequate financing, too, is still not in hand.

When the consultant showed a flowchart-type diagram of his understanding of the hospital arrangement for the complex proposed for the LSU Footprint, the audience literally chuckled out loud at the complexity of the image:

There is also clearly some simmering tension under the surface between LSU and several of the other schools with seats on the board.  As one board member noted, nothing beyond placement on the board has really been worked out amongst all the component schools.  And another board member noted that the design has "a number of barriers" - it's unclear how all the players will play together and how funds will be exchanged.

Other slides outlined the challenges in reduced federal funding starting in 2014 will complicate things for teaching hospitals.  It was made clear, yet again, that nobody really knows how the changes from Obamacare will impact hospitals, especially a hospital that is still very much in the planning stages.

And still, as one member of the UMCMC Board noted, as if it somehow made everything okay, "We got geniuses in the room."

"There have been some very big concerns about the state moving ahead with the new teaching hospital after Mayor Mitch Landrieu criticized some of the specifics of the state’s plan for the proposed $1 billion design."

Right - and it's good to see the local television media questioning Governor Bobby Jindal about just how he plans to pull off the project given all of those concerns.

And there were concerns even before Mayor Mitch Landrieu questioned the UMC design for the LSU Footprint.  Many of them remain.  And they extend far beyond the design alone.  They extend beyond the conveyance computer crisis.

For one, the size of the site itself is still excessive.  The design changes may alter the chess pieces that sit on various spaces on the board, but the board size itself remains in place.  The UMC Footprint boundaries have not been altered.  Rehabilitating the existing Charity Hospital building is not back on the table - or, really, finally on the table for the first time since Katrina - from what I know.

Additionally, the question of funding remains.  The UMC Board likes to talk as if the funding will fall in place - but it will take months to determine whether HUD will be able to back the remaining financing necessary to actually build the proposed hospital.

Beyond that, the continued demolition of historic structures that contribute to a national historic district continues.  There is no concrete house moving plan for the UMC Footprint, unlike on the VA side of the project.

There are also people who continue to reside in the UMC Footprint - a fact that seems lost on Governor Jindal and others.  There are also numerous working businesses in the site, some of them multi-million dollar enterprises - a security company, a guest house on the streetcar line, a uniform shop, an electronics firm, an independent auto parts store, and auto mechanic shops.  The massive Blood Center will also have to relocate, as well as a charter school, Priestley, where students will be dislocated and moved to modular units halfway through the school year (over the holidays).

In fact, I wonder how many conservatives and Republicans across the nation know that Governor Bobby Jindal is backing an urban renewal-style government project that entails widespread use of eminent domain (expropriation here in Louisiana).  I wonder if property rights advocates know that Jindal is backing a project that is now contemplating retail - private enterprise - as a direct beneficiary of the land acquisition in the UMC Footprint. 

I bet they'd find that interesting.  I know I do.

"it seems to me a one-year period is time people cannot afford to waste"

In this piece, Congressman Joseph Cao spoke about the existing FEMA appeals process, which takes a year on average:

"If children are waiting for a school to reopen, or ill people are waiting for a hospital to reopen, it seems to me a one-year period is time people cannot afford to waste," he said.

That's interesting...coming from a Congressman who has failed to show any empathy for the people of Lower Mid-City who are being displaced by the proposed hospitals, and who has not supported the RMJM Hillier plan for re-opening Charity Hospital - which could have restored medical care to New Orleans more rapidly and for less cost than the current plan to build hospitals in Lower Mid-City.