DDD President & CEO Kurt Weigle's letter to the New Orleans Time Picayune regarding the proposed LSU/VA hospitals Published April 4, 2008 Dear Editors: After attending Tuesday’s State Senate field hearing on the proposed LSU academic medical center, I am convinced that we are at a crossroads in Louisiana and Greater New Orleans. We must decide if we are serious about pursuing true excellence in healthcare for our citizens and in the development of our flagship public university. It is plain fact that top notch facilities help to attract top notch physicians and researchers – those who can substantially expand the amount of leading edge treatment available in Louisiana. Our citizens deserve this just as much as citizens in the dozens of states that have invested heavily in state of the art, public medical facilities. Of course, the State must be prudent in deciding the number of beds in a new academic medical center and how much to spend to create those beds. In this too, though, we should not sell ourselves short. All of us know friends or family who have traveled to academic medical centers in other states to receive medical treatment, taking their health care dollars with them. Let’s expand access to leading edge medical care right here in Louisiana so we don’t have to send our loved ones to Houston and Birmingham, and let’s start to attract folks from other states to our own university-based centers of excellence – something we can do only with state of the art facilities. We cannot afford to argue over who is to get the biggest piece of today’s pie. By planning for true excellence, let’s bake a bigger pie for Louisiana so that we all will enjoy a feast of better health care and greater economic prosperity. We all should urge the Governor to expeditiously complete his review of the LSU academic medical center plan and to proceed toward excellence with all haste. Kurt M Weigle |  | ||
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