This headline - and others like it - applauded a gift to one new children's hospital in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
But there continues to be little discussion of why the existing players in this market couldn't collaborate and therefore there are now two major construction projects involving two competing pediatric care entities in the Twin Cities.
And now there will be FIVE different pediatric facilities within a stone's throw of each other.
In this economy?
Why isn't there a public discussion about this?
Boston, Philadelphia - even Milwaukee - must be wondering what's going on here. Why don't we who live here wonder out loud about what's going on here?
From Dr. Cerra's announcement:
"The new state-of-the-art University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital will be an ecologically friendly, 96-bed, 227,000-square-foot facility that consolidates in one patient- and family-centered location the hospital's 50 pediatric specialties. This is not an expansion of pediatric beds, but a replacement of children's services that are challenging to access in the current hospital configuration in which children's services are housed within the adult hospital. The project's estimated cost is $275 million-$175 million of which has been secured in bonds for financing; the remaining $100 million will be raised through philanthropy."
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275 million dollars for an unnecessary hundred bed children's hospital?
This is insanity.
Bill Gleason