Dive Brief:
- Following Hurricane Katrina, Charity Hospital in New Orleans struggled to stay in business.
- The suddenly-smaller staff initially worked out of tents, an abandoned Lord & Taylor department store and then finally a small interim hospital with scaled-back services.
- Almost 10 years later, the hospital, now known as University Medical Center New Orleans, opened a new $1.1 billion facility.
Dive Insight:
Although the the hospital is being touted as the centerpiece of a bigger and better healthcare system for the poor, some are concerned that the new hospital won't uphold Charity's previous mission.
“There is a perception that U.M.C. wasn’t built for the population that Charity served,” Jacques Morial, a community organizer who helped lead a lawsuit over Charity’s closing, told The New York Times. “That’s because there’s been no urgency to either replace what Charity represented or rebuild the trust that those who relied on Charity had in it.”
But Dr. Jennifer Avegno, an emergency department physician who was completing her residency at Charity when Hurricane Katrina hit, said the quality of care Charity has always provided will finally match its physical space.
“We have never treated our indigent patients as second-class citizens, but in such a rundown building it was easy for them to think, ‘These people don’t really care much about what they’re doing," she said.