The debate over where to rebuild the new replacement hospital for the "LSU/State shuttered" Charity Hospital is raging and puts retrofitting Charity Hospital back on the table!  [Letter from the Governor asking the UMC board to consider all options for the new hospital - "beyond those in existing studies" - is attached].

Part of the renewed efforts to retrofit the new hospital inside the existing shell of the Reverend Avery C. Alexander Charity Hospital is House Concurrent Resolution 59.  In the race to address all bills up for debate before this legislative session expires, lawmakers have pushed HCR 59 to Tuesday June 21, 2011.  We have created an easy one stop shop form that explains the bill and that you can use to ask all House Representatives to pass HCR 59.

On Thursday we sent out an email asking you to contact your legislators to ask them to support HCR 59.  The bill requires that funding for the new UMC Academic Medical Center in New Orleans must be approved by the full house and full senate.   This bill will bring much needed oversight to a process that has been neither transparent nor accountable to citizens of the State of Louisiana.

As this project will be partly State funded and State subsidized, the issue effects us all.  Unnecessary money that is spent on building and sustaining a design that will not cash flow takes other money away from much needed projects to return and improve healthcare to New Orleans and other hospitals as well as other important capital outlay needs around the State.