NOLA.com, whose job it is to find answers to these questions, nonetheless asks us. "
Will the Mid-City hospital complex spark an economic boom?"
Paolo Zambito, LCMC Health's senior vice president for strategy and
business development, said the goal will be to focus on several
destination programs: ear-nose-throat and skull-based treatments,
neurosciences offering deep brain stimulation to treat Parkinson's
disease, a possible burn unit and a focus on cancer with new technology.
LCMC Health officials also feel strongly about the role of clinical
trials and growing the pharmaceutical industry in New Orleans, he said.
Zambito spoke Friday at a real estate seminar at the University of
New Orleans that focused largely on what new hospitals opening means for
the future of real estate and the local economy. University Medical
Center, operated by LCMC Health, sits next to a new $1 billion Veterans
Affairs hospital, set to open next year.
The precise impact of the combined $2.1 billion medical complex on
the surrounding Mid-City and downtown neighborhoods is still unclear,
but many are bracing for big changes.
So maybe! But
you do have to open the thing if you want to find out.
The state’s higher education institutions would get $575 million of
the $650 million, leaving health care facing a sizable shortfall.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Fannin, R-Jonesboro,
said health care would get more money if the Legislature raises more
revenue, makes other budget cuts or if other money is collected through
higher taxes.
The shortfall in health care means less money for health care for
poor children and their mothers, the developmentally disabled, the
working poor who don’t have health insurance, the elderly living in
state nursing homes and state aid for the public hospitals now under
private management, including the big New Orleans hospital slated to
open in August.
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