Since the proposed LSU/VA project was conceived, it has been represented to the public as an absolutely non-negotiable necessity. New Orleanians were told that only a gigantic sprawling medical campus would satisfy the needs to the two tenants, LSU and the VA. Though many questioned the amount of land being seized especially in consideration of the community destruction and displacement such a development would cause, politicians and insiders brushed those concerns aside. Co-locating the two facilities adjacent to one another was critical to reducing construction and operating costs, they said. This is one of the foremost reasons they have refused to examine less expensive, faster, and less destructive plans to bring new medical facilities online.

Yet, the latest designs for each half of the proposed medical campus demonstrate a near total lack of shared infrastructure and services.

Back in March, LSU's top doc conceded that LSU's own inability to develop a legitimate financing plan to build its proposed hospital had prevented the development of a truly cooperative medical complex. 

Building a new state hospital alongside a planned U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in lower Mid-City won't produce the initial level of savings once touted by the Louisiana State University System, according to the school's top health officer. 

Dr. Fred Cerise said the primary reason is that a lack of clear financing has put LSU behind its original schedule, while federal money is lined up for the Veterans Affairs hospital slated to open in 2012, negating plans for sharing some equipment and facilities.

"We are not at a point of planning these facilities in sync and opening the same day," Cerise said last week. "(VA officials) can't plan on building a hospital that depends on the sharing of critical components."

Yet Cerise continued to say - in the same article - that there would indeed be cost savings and shared infrastructure.

Cerise said last week, "The idea that we'd have one base building with a VA tower and an LSU tower -- that's obviously not going to happen."

He said the design teams are discussing having just one central energy plant, an infrastructure piece that accounts for $84 million of the state's construction budget. Cerise also said LSU would like a raised, closed walkway spanning Galvez to connect the two hospitals, though he could not guarantee that will be in the next round of renderings.

VA officials declined to discuss the specific plans pending further study of the potential sharing and its savings.

Goza said there is "active discussion" to share high-cost equipment, kitchen and food service, the central energy plant and work force training space.

Historically, LSU and VA have shared hyperbaric therapy, trauma, radiology-oncology and obstetric-gynecology services.

Over the last two weeks, the VA and LSU design teams separately presented their new drawings for their respective halves of the proposed medical campus development. As one can plainly see, both sites will build and maintain their own central energy plants.

The proposed VAMC:

VAMC Central Energy Plant at bottom right.

The propsed LSUAMC:

Thus, the only "shared infrastructure" still on the table is an undefined street-level walkway from one campus to the other. For all the emphasis placed on the importance of co-location, shared services, and shared infrastructure, it is striking that LSU and the VA are both abandoning sites that were closer together and which shared more resources.

Politicians and citizens would be wise to demand to know how much the failure to consolidate resources between the two new hospitals has raised the total construction costs of the two hospitals and the future operating expenses for which taxpayers will be on the hook. Citizens should demand to know the extent to which the myth of shared infrastructure informed local officials' decisions to support this boondoggle proposal in the first place.

Perhaps more importantly, it is time to finally reevaluate this site selection decision that promotes the destruction of a residential community and the abandonment of Charity Hospital and the struggling downtown medical district. Given that the primary rationale for such a large land seizure - the savings from co-location - has turned out to be non-existent, what other compelling reasons exist for the construction of such a costly development when there are superior alternatives on the table?