Vitter offers leaner N.O. hospital proposal

In a move that puts Louisiana’s top GOP leaders at odds, U.S. Sen. David Vitter and other state officials today pitched a proposal for an $800 million New Orleans teaching and research hospital that they say would cost less and be a more manageable model than the one Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal proposes. Vitter, House Speaker Jim Tucker and Treasurer John Kennedy, all Republicans, sent a letter to Jindal with their recommendations about the new University Medical Center. The letter, obtained by The Associated Press, proposes a new partnership between LSU and Tulane University. The state would buy shares of Tulane’s hospitals in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish and merge those facilities with a new state-constructed 250-bed hospital, smaller in scale than the 424-bed hospital Jindal wants. The three facilities would make up the University Medical Center, organized to train new doctors, nurses and other health professionals, take care of the indigent patients, and boost medical research in the New Orleans area. Vitter, Tucker and Kennedy said in the letter the plan they propose would cost well below the $1.2 billion price of the current project and could be achieved mainly with dollars already in hand, rather than requiring $400 million in borrowing. The new proposal comes after the latest consultant reviewing the 424-bed UMC proposal said it would require state subsidies of up to $125 million a year to operate. Fred Cerise, LSU vice chancellor for health affairs and medical education, called the Vitter proposal “a stunt” that could hamper LSU’s ability to develop a world-class academic teaching facility on a par with those in Birmingham, Ala., and Houston.