Academic med center compromise forming

Dan Kulin

Friday, March 3, 2006 | 10:42 a.m.

A compromise is shaping up in the one-time battle over whether a proposed Las Vegas academic medical center should go downtown or near University Medical Center, with city and state university leaders discussing having parts of the center in both places.

Specifics remain to be worked out, and Dr. John McDonald, dean of the Nevada medical school, has yet to bring a plan for a center to the Board of Regents - something he plans to do March 17.

But McDonald said splitting the components of a health services center, the new working name for an academic medical center, is doable and attractive.

Such a plan would allow parts of a new center to be next to the research-intensive Lou Ruvo Alzheimer's Institute, which is planned for the city's 61 acres on the western edge of downtown.

Other parts of a medical center, which could include teaching hospitals and nursing and possibly new dentistry programs, would be close to the university's Shadow Lane medical campus near UMC.

"We've got a lot more work to do, but we're all on the same page here," McDonald said about talks to split the center between two locations.

While Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman wants more medical facilities around the planned Alzheimer's institute, he said he does not believe that the entire medical center should be located on the 61 acres site.

"I don't want a hospital right next to residential," Goodman said, referring to plans to include office and condominium high rises on the property.

"We want a building that will be compatible with the Alzheimer's center, a research facility," he said.

The "helicopters and noise" that would come with a top-level hospital would be especially unwelcome on the city's downtown land, the mayor said.

Goodman originally bristled at the notion that such a center would go anywhere but on the 61 acres, and talked with officials from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center about running the center.

But that idea drew opposition from the medical community and local university officials, who pushed for establishing a new locally controlled medical center at the Shadow Lane campus.

Goodman later softened his stance, saying the precise location of an academic research center was less important than the fact that it be somewhere in Las Vegas.

Estimates of the center's cost range from $250 million to more than $400 million. The Legislature last year set aside $5.5 million for the project's planning and design.

Dan Kulin can be reached at 229-6436 or at dan@lasvegassun.com.