The most recent issue of New Orleans Magazine just hit the newsstands. It features an absolutely brilliant article written by Dr. Brobson Lutz, M.D. about the local implications of the H1N1 virus and Louisiana's past history addressing outbreaks. H1N1, or swine flu, has already made its way to our state. Notably, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was quarantined in China to quell a possible exposure to the virus.

Our favorite part of the article, titled Influenza in Louisiana, was the final powerful paragraph:

During past epidemics from yellow fever to AIDS, Charity Hospital was there for us. If influenza pandemic brings this country to its knees this fall, New Orleans will need a quickly expandable source of hospital beds, antibiotics, and ventilators to treat serious complications. Woe be the feckless Louisiana State University medical school leadership who shuttered Charity in 2005 in hopes of garnering a FEMA powerball payout that never came.

Right on!

Unfortunately it isn't just the possibility of future influenza outbreaks that highlights the cost of Charity Hospital's absence. Rather, not having Charity these last few years has badly hurt our local capacity for treating any number of major and minor emergency and long-term maladies.

Voices of San Diego has an interesting piece about the failure of Metabasis Therapeutics, a San Diego biotech firm that serves as a cautionary tale for New Orleans and its bid to bolster a bioscience corridor:

They didn't, however, expect CEO Mark Erion to walk into the room and announce that the company was all but broke, and nearly everyone -- 45 out of the company's 52 employees -- was being laid off. Nor did they expect Erion to tell them that they weren't getting any severance pay, or even their unused vacation pay, and that if they didn't hurry to the bank to cash their final paycheck, it would probably bounce.

The events over the next hours and days at Metabasis, as recounted by former employees, were bizarre, even for the world of biotech, where companies big and small can be one failed drug away from oblivion. In the conference room that Tuesday morning, human resources people hurriedly handed out folders with last paychecks to employees who immediately headed to nearby Bank of America branches, the only bank that Erion told them would take the checks.

"We were thrown out into a bank run," said one manager who was laid off. "It was a crazy scene, like the 1929 stock market crash. It was an amazing debacle."

The past year has been a bloodbath for San Diego's biotech cluster, which, depending on the day, includes about 700 companies. Since last June, local life sciences companies have laid off more than 3,000 people, according to the website Xconomy. Bud Leedom, a local stock analyst who focuses on California companies, said that while the events described by the former Metabasis employees are shocking, abrupt layoffs and company closures will become more commonplace given the barren funding environment that is likely to last for years.

"Management has been somewhat jaded over the last 20 years, confident that when push comes to shove something will happen," Leedom said. "That thought process is colliding with an unprecedented situation in the market -- it's not hard to raise money, its virtually impossible for some companies." Other industry watchers agree with Leedom that this is one of the most difficult periods in the history of biotech.

Remember that San Diego purportedly has one of the more robust bioscience clusters in the country. A recent New York Times article profiled the massive competition between cities for bioscience startups that have shown little track record for success.

SaveCharityHospital.com has been sympathetic toward the rationales for attracting a new bioscience industry to New Orleans. We have argued vehemently against the notion that the proposed LSU/VA is any more attractive as an anchor to such an industry than a new state-of-the-art facility in the world-renowned Charity Hospital.

It now appears increasingly appropriate to question whether the recent actions by LSU, and their inability to create a functional governance or financing plan, threatens New Orleans' chances of attracting a bioscience industry. Given the economy in general, the state of the bioscience industry around the country, and the apparently long odds cities have faced in attracting prosperous biotech companies even during better times, we need to ensure that the new hospital that ends up being built in New Orleans supports these wider goals.

Because New Orleans has had a pretty robust medical district historically, we believe it's worthwhile to put a little bit of seed money into attracting related businesses.

We don't, however, see any compelling reason why we should destroy a residential neighborhood, mortgage healthcare while we beg for LSU to get its act together, or close our eyes to the possible criminality involved in shuttering the hospital in the first place when there might be faster and less expensive options for bolstering healthcare to New Orleans residents and restoring jobs to our medical district.

Congressman Joseph Cao (R- New Orleans) has, until recently, been one of the more vocal public figures pushing for the proposed LSU/VA project and against the examination of potentially more viable alternatives that might incorporate Charity Hospital.

Notably, Rep. Cao personally delivered a letter to President Obama which pushed the demonstrable falsehood that Charity "was completed destroyed by Hurricane Katrina." Soon after, he organized a special panel at Charity Hospital in which a tour of the building and forum on the dispute was scrapped for a less specific discussion about FEMA in general.

Last week, Rep. Cao went even further toward reversing his earlier position. At a community health fair, Cao spoke to Amber Sandoval-Griffin, of the Times-Picayune:

"These are issues that we are concerned about -- the lack of health care in the city and the lack of accurate adequate infrastructure, " Cao said. "In respect to Charity, my main focus is to get the necessary funding, the $492 million that the state contends FEMA owes the state, to either rebuild the old Charity or to build a new state-of-the-art hospital."

(Emphasis added)

That's an important step for the Congressman, though he misleadingly sets up the dichotomy as being between an "old Charity" and a new hospital when in fact both competing proposals would result in a brand-new state-of-the-art facility. One step at a time, of course.

When LSU backed away from a supposed agreement with Tulane University over how a proposed new medical center in New Orleans would be governed, the State Division of Administration subsequently halted the land acquisition and expropriation process for the proposed Lower Mid-City footprint.

In doing so, the state admitted, contrary to the testimony to the legislature and various public statements by state and LSU officials, that there is no financing plan in place to construct the proposed medical facility.

The Division of Administration's press release on the matter says so quite explicitly:

"The governance structure is a critical step toward developing a financing model for the new facility... Without this corporation, or an agreement by the stakeholders to form the corporation, financing the project becomes a bigger challenge."

The formulation here, that a governance structure is necessary to build a financing model, is interesting given how many months, if not years, the public has been told that there is a plan in place to obtain the necessary $1.2 billion to raze Lower Mid-City and build a new medical complex.

The public was told it was a done deal and that this was why evaluating viable alternatives that might provide health care faster, for less money, and without displacing a neighborhood was an objectionable request.

The admission that they really haven't developed a sound business model would appear to make calls for an evaluation of other options more appropriate than ever. Yet for some reason, the Times-Picayune editorial board and the New Orleans Business Council can barely muster the courage to scold LSU for backing out of the governance agreement negotiated with Tulane as if the equitable division of board appointments is the one thing keeping us from seeing cranes over Lower Mid-City.

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We just sent this new video to the SaveCharityHospital.com mailing list.

It's called "Hungry for Health Care" and you can check it out at our YouTube channel or by clicking below.

If you haven't already, join our mailing list so that you can receive new content like this video, action alerts, and other important information as we move in to the middle of summer.

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Between 4 and 5PM on Saturday, June 27th - that's tomorrow - Organizing For America will hold a rally in front of Charity Hospital to cap off efforts in support of President Obama's National Health Care Day of Service.

Check it out!

A proclamation will be issued honoring all health care professionals and health care providers who remained in New Orleans during Katrina and those who returned to our City. Participants are asked to bring their health care stories, particularly those involving the significance of Charity Hospital in New Orleans.

You will have an opportunity to record your stories. Written surveys will be forwarded to President Obama and entered as stories in the health care reform stories blog.

The Charity memoirs will be compiled and made available for public readings.

There are a whole slate of health related service events scheduled throughout the city on Saturday including AIDS testing, a healthy food drive, a blood drive, and more. You can see them here.

Healthcare reform is at the heart of the President's domestic policy agenda just as healthcare infrastructure remains the number one hole in our local social safety net.

Be there!

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Last night, the State House voted to kill Senate Bill 75, which would have put the New Orleans Master Plan and Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance to a popular vote. SB 75, proposed by Senator Ed Murray (D - New Orleans), would have essentially overruled a referendum held in New Orleans last November in which citizens voted to empower the City Planning Commission and the City Council to adopt a master plan that would then have the force of law. Since it was voted down by the House, it has been attached as an amendment to another bill but it is unclear whether it has a realistic shot at passage. It is likely that debate will continue until the session closes later this evening.

However it turns out, it is clear that support for Murray's efforts gained some degree of traction because of a lack of confidence in the current Master Plan under development by the firm Goody Clancy. This much was clear at the District 4 meeting and at a subsequent public forum in front of the City Planning Commission.

It has become increasingly clear to us that the Master Plan has been partially undermined by the failure to include the city's major development projects in its scope. Without a substantive evaluation of the impacts of the two competing hospital plans  - the LSU-preferred $1.2 billion medical campus or the less expensive and faster alternative to renovate Charity Hospital - the Goody Clancy Master Plan remains insufficiently comprehensive. The failure to critically analyze other large development projects such as the potential abandonment of City Hall in the wake of the proposed purchase of the Chevron building, the Reinventing the Crescent Waterfront riverfront project, and the proposed sports entertainment district around the Superdome.

Taken individually, none of these are necessarily catastrophic proposals. On balance, however, they represent an enormous commitment of recovery dollars to projects not subject to the skeptical analysis of the Goody Clancy planning process.

The failure of City Council and the City Planning Commission to acknowledge and deal with these deficiencies has created a climate that has invited such bold moves which undermine the master plan concept, such as those attempted by Senator Murray and his allies.

Should attempts to undermine the Master Plan ultimately fail, the City Planning Commission and the City Council will be charged with approving or rejecting the version being crafted by Goody Clancy. Yet, the deficiencies in the scope of the plan will still remain and so too will public queries to the CPC and Council about the strength of the document.

On May 27th, LSU President John V. Lombardi gave a much-discussed talk to the LSU Foundation and said, amongst other things, the following: 

"Well LSU's presented about five business plans but the current business plan has been validated by every smart consultant in the Western World. It shows this deal will work. It shows that the way we're doing this will be capable of generating revenue, capable of providing the capital that will make this work."

Then two weeks later, in testimony to the Senate Education Committee against House Bill 780, Director of the Office of Facility Planning and Control Jerry Jones alleged that the bill was a bad idea because it would halt progress on the proposed LSU medical complex in Lower Mid-City. Addressing the Committee on June 11th, Jones said:

"To say that there isn't a business plan is just not the truth. We have had three business plans.

Of course all of those purported plans were put together before the credit crisis and financial collapse.

Yesterday's press release by Jones' boss, Division of Administration Commissioner Angele Davis seems to confirm that neither Director Jones nor President Lombardi have been entirely forthright with the Committee, in other recent testimony to the Legislature, nor in various public statements stressing the same point.

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What is going on in Baton Rouge today?

This just in from the Times-Picayune:

State halts land acquisition for New Orleans teaching hospital

Seeking leverage to force a truce between Louisiana State University and Tulane University, the state is suspending land acquisition activities for the teaching hospital proposed for lower Mid-City, the Jindal administration said today.

The announcement by Commissioner of Administration Angele Davis came a day after the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors rejected a draft memorandum of understanding that calls for the $1.2 billion hospital to be run by a non-profit corporation governed by an independent, 12-member board of directors.

Here is Commissioner Davis' full statement:

"There remains no agreement on the proposed governing structure and it is critical that we make an intensified effort to reach an agreement before the state acts to purchase the property. The proposed agreement called for a non-profit corporation to operate the hospital, with the corporation being responsible for obtaining debt financing. Without this corporation, or an agreement by the stakeholders to form the corporation, financing the project becomes a bigger challenge.

 

"This will have no impact on the VA Hospital and the on-going land acquisition activities for the new VA Hospital in New Orleans. Today, we are suspending land acquisition activities and efforts for the MCLNO / Charity replacement hospital pending a resolution of the governance issue."

This is, at face value, excellent news. However, our intial concern is that the state is basing the decision to halt acquisition based on the governance issue when the reality is that the LSU financing plan will remained flawed regardless of how Tulane and LSU resolve their political issues.

To that end, we're also interested in a resolution that was passed out of the Senate late yesterday. Senate Resolution 116 by Sen. Jack Donahue (R - Mandeville) "requests the LSU Board of Supervisors to submit all of its existing business plans and all supporting data for the development of a replacement for the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans to the Senate by 3 pm on Tuesday, June 23, 2009."

Thus, LSU would be encouraged to back up their bravado on their financing plan for construction of the proposed new medical complex. Rhetorically, it's similar to the inherently more substantive HB 780, which would have prohibited land acquisition until the Legislature approved a business plan.

This resolution strikes us as somewhat unusual. Perhaps Sen. Donahue is embarrassed about his vote against HB 780 on the Education Committee from two weeks ago.

Wild end to the session, no?

We'll report back when we know more.

It is such a shame that House Bill 780, which would have protected Lower Mid-City property owners and residents from undue expropriations, looks like it has been left to die on the vine. The proposal would have prohibited land transfers in the footprint for the proposed LSU medical complex until LSU can prove that they can actually raise the money to realize the project. Certainly, the careless use of eminent domain sets an alarming precedent but the callous indifference demonstrated by so many of our elected leaders has been especially offensive.

Concurrently, LSU and Tulane continue to bicker back and forth over who gets to control the board of the proposed new facility and how many board seats each institution will receive. The contrast is striking. While we were fighting in vain to provide reasonable protections for neighborhood residents, the establishment was locked in a bitter tug-of-war over imaginary six-figure salaries. How do you divide up board appointments for a hospital that doesn't exist and has no money with which to proceed?

It's like getting into a fist-fight over how you're going to share your Powerball winnings.

Capturing the outrage we feel, we were glad to see that honorary Charity Hospital baby, Charlotte Hamrick, published not one but two letters today. Check out the Monroe News Star and the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

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