Denver Development Thread (4)

[Strange Meat]

Can't we all just get a bong? Seriously, all the MMJ shops around and people still acting so uptight...

[Eeyore]

Funny 007.

Sounds like someone wants to see me in one!



Actually I was at CU Medical for my mom and I did not want to say where I was as it would of given up the view surprise. It had a great view of downtown to I took a picture as I always have my camara with me. As a side note I was told they are about to start construction of a new tower that will have 300 beds and be 12 stories. It should start next month.

Here are my pictures hope you like!









Not downtown but I had to get a picture of the sunset.

[The Dirt]

Wow, those are some cool shots! I love this time of the year - everything is so green! I especially like the third one.

Best wishes for your mom - I hope that she has a speedy recovery!

Also, great shots of Solera, MidCow. I've been noticing that they've been slowly taking the plastic wrap down. Hopefully, 2020 Lawrence will break ground soon after they finish off on this site. Zocalo is bringing some much needed love to this area.

[Eeyore]

Thank you!

[SnyderBock]

I am still thinking about vaginas.

[Giovoni]

Originally Posted by Eeyore

Funny 007.

Sounds like someone wants to see me in one!



Actually I was at CU Medical for my mom and I did not want to say where I was as it would of given up the view surprise. It had a great view of downtown to I took a picture as I always have my camara with me. As a side note I was told they are about to start construction of a new tower that will have 300 beds and be 12 stories. It should start next month.

Here are my pictures hope you like!









Not downtown but I had to get a picture of the sunset.

Expect more of these when I work there. Eeyore has illustrated wonderfully how gorgeous that view is - especially from the new reasearch towers and the bridges between them on the west side of campus. Sadly, maddeningly the pathology department at Childrens is in the basement levels - (the ONLY hospital I've ever interviewed at where this is the case, even the university department is above ground damn!!!) I think I actually have a fair number of pics from my last interview there.. maybe I'll post those sometime soon.

Also Eeyore is exactly right that University Hospital is about to expand, as is the Children's hospital. CHD is already twice the number of beds it was when it was downtown. The new expansion has the potential to double the number of beds there again. (4X the original bed number). They are beginning to ramp up the children's neuromuscular service, and are planning to add epilepsy and other seizure related disorders to their surgical services. I'm sure they are doing a lot of other things that I'm not totally aware of in other departments as well. They wish to become the best Childrens Hospital in the country and seem to be serious about making it happen. Now is a fantastic time to be involved with that campus as the number and caliber of institutions there is starting to gel and realize some of the promise that was touted when the move was first planned.

If the state (voters) don't let the medical school and it's associated researchers (faculty) die from lack of funding this campus will become an absolute jewel for the region.

[Midnight Cowboy]

Originally Posted by Giovoni

If the state (voters) don't let the medical school and it's associated researchers (faculty) die from lack of funding this campus will become an absolute jewel for the region.

Hopefully Tabor will be repealed, and the Dark Age for higher ed in Colorado will finally be over.

[Pizzuti]

*smacks forehead*

Alright guys, have your doom and gloom party. There is a fine line between desire and rational conclusions, and I suspect you're licking your chops to an extent for what you see the fun and crazy post-apocalyptic world in which everyone agrees with economic conservative philosophies after an extended recession takes out the Democrats. I also suspect that if you were less economically privileged and if you thought a coming recession/depression would really impact you personally, you wouldn't be so eager to see it as inevitable. I also suspect that if John McCain were president and promoting identical policies to Barack Obama's, you guys would be for it, because someone you like is in charge.

I would say the current 3-week decline in the market is very clearly driven by deflation and fear, as the U.S. dollar rises in value relative to everything else, as it inarguably has over the last 3 weeks with the Euro dropping, and the same total amount of wealth is represented by fewer dollars. The markets will necessarily drop under those circumstances. Add to that the fact that investors are temporarily pausing on investing more as they attempt to see how the winds have changed, oh, and that all the Glen Beck fans are pulling everything out of the markets and putting it in gold. That's a far simpler explanation than a bunch of abstract and speculative theories to tie our current economic situation to debt, or even more bizarrely, to the size of government.

"THIS DECLINE IS THE FIRST SIGN OF SOMETHING TO COME" is like saying that getting a cold is the first sign that you may have terminal pancreatic cancer.

It's a weird mental state in which somebody could consider an economy that is adding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month, is somehow also in decline for some reason, and that somehow it is all these abstract graphs, rather than the total amount that Americans are spending and producing, that defines our economic health.

I would also argue that the roughly $15 trillion U.S. economy is considerably more robust, and qualitatively different, than the $350B Greek economy (smaller than Wal-Mart) which is inflexible because it is fixed to the gold standard.

But that's just me.

[Eeyore]

Originally Posted by Giovoni

Expect more of these when I work there. Eeyore has illustrated wonderfully how gorgeous that view is - especially from the new reasearch towers and the bridges between them on the west side of campus. Sadly, maddeningly the pathology department at Childrens is in the basement levels - (the ONLY hospital I've ever interviewed at where this is the case, even the university department is above ground damn!!!) I think I actually have a fair number of pics from my last interview there.. maybe I'll post those sometime soon.

Also Eeyore is exactly right that University Hospital is about to expand, as is the Children's hospital. CHD is already twice the number of beds it was when it was downtown. The new expansion has the potential to double the number of beds there again. (4X the original bed number). They are beginning to ramp up the children's neuromuscular service, and are planning to add epilepsy and other seizure related disorders to their surgical services. I'm sure they are doing a lot of other things that I'm not totally aware of in other departments as well. They wish to become the best Childrens Hospital in the country and seem to be serious about making it happen. Now is a fantastic time to be involved with that campus as the number and caliber of institutions there is starting to gel and realize some of the promise that was touted when the move was first planned.

If the state (voters) don't let the medical school and it's associated researchers (faculty) die from lack of funding this campus will become an absolute jewel for the region.

I look foward to your pictures.

One corection though. You said it "will become an absolute jewel for the region" it already IS an absolute jewel for the region. I say that as a Coloradoan.

[Giovoni]

Right now it's just what we had at Colorado BLVD with some improvements with CHD replacing the VA in terms of jobs. With the new VA on the campus and the hospitals all starting to become much larger and productive (and collaborative) we will move beyond what we had at 9th/CO which was a well respected regional tertiary referral and research institution. The kind of thing that every state in the country, save several states in the South and some of the sparsely populated western states, all have. The kinds of programs being invisioned at least at CHD will vault them into one of 3 or 4 institutions in the entire country that have the services they want to offer. Same with CU.

CU/CHD/VA has a chance (albeit an outside one) of being mentioned with John's Hopkins, Mayo and UCLA which right now are the current Gold Standard of health care in this country and the world (in terms of the level of care possible - what they all do with money is an entirely different discussion). They have a very good chance of being mentioned with the Cleveland Clinic, MDAnderson, Duke, Washington U, UCSF type places with what they are doing now. That is as long as the active, thriving medical school is preserved.

If they lose that they will be Kaiser Sunset/LAC, Orlando Regional Medical Center/Winnie Palmer. Who are they you ask? .. and that's the point.

[Midnight Cowboy]

I thought that CU-Med already had elite status. I always found it astonishing, when I lived in NYC, hearing about NY sports stars traveling to Colorado for treatment. I mean, shit, they passed on John Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, and University of Minnesota to get treatment in the Rocky Mountain West. I know you know more about hospitals than I, so I am not arguing with you, but I always had the perception that CU and the School of Mines were on par with the top ten schools in the nation with respect to their disciplines.

[Giovoni]

Originally Posted by Midnight Cowboy

I thought that CU-Med already had elite status. I always found it astonishing, when I lived in NYC, hearing about NY sports stars traveling to Colorado for treatment. I mean, shit, they passed on John Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, and University of Minnesota to get treatment in the Rocky Mountain West. I know you know more about hospitals than I, so I am not arguing with you, but I always had the perception that CU and the School of Mines were on par with the top ten schools in the nation with respect to their disciplines.

Most of the sports stars who travel to Colorado, from my experience, are going to Vail to either the Steadman clinic or a handful of other very well respected surgeons who specialize in professional and elite amature athletes. VERY serious spinal type injuries often are handled at the Craig hospital in Denver too but that's not part of the CU campus (which is too bad).

And I think I gave a wrong impression that there are huge differences in institutions once you're at a university or large tertiary center, or even a large level 1 trauma center like Denver Health. There are places you go, (Pueblo, COS, Grand Junction) when you have a medical emergency because you have no other choice. They are good at stabilizing you at these places and at performing routine procedures in all specialties. There is a gap from those kinds of places and every tertiary center in cases which are complicated (weird autoimmune diseases, anything at all in healthy older old populations 75-80 y/o and above, sarcomas, a legion of others). These gaps are small and amount to one or two things the clinician doesn't know how to integrate into a weird case. Not because they aren't smart enough, but because in any one community certain cases only appear very rarely and there isn't enough repetition to learn and retain what you need.

Once you get to the regional centers there is very little seperation. And that seperation is based on innovation and research, not on the quality of medical care you will get. We're talking about the same level of separation that would be between someone who gets a 1550 on the SAT compared to 1600. To carry that a little further, the three big ones in the US would be 1600, that 2nd teir would be 1575 and all other regional places like CU would be 1500-1550. Community medical centers would be around 1300 - 1400 depending on a number of factors; still great, still absolutely essential to American medicine, just not good at non routine (nor should they be).

Also, the experts in large referral centers share the same quality as the community physicians, only in reverse. In my case, I will become one of 4 or 5 physicians in the US with pediatric, neuro, anatomic and clinical pathology boards. This means I will be uniquely qualified to read EXTREMELY rare cases which are only seen 10-15 times a year in the entire country. It also means I'll be so focused on a group of diseases that almost never happen, that I'll be uniquely UNqualified to do things like manage someone's high blood pressure medications.

These things make me excited and rambly.. sorry about that!

[Eeyore]

^

That was interesting actually. It shows how the entire medical community from regional hospitals like in Pueblo or Colorado Springs work with your large world class facilities like CU Medical in Denver to keep us healthy.

[A-G]

Originally Posted by Giovoni

Most of the sports stars who travel to Colorado, from my experience, are going to Vail to either the Steadman clinic or a handful of other very well respected surgeons who specialize in professional and elite amature athletes. VERY serious spinal type injuries often are handled at the Craig hospital in Denver too but that's not part of the CU campus (which is too bad).

And I think I gave a wrong impression that there are huge differences in institutions once you're at a university or large tertiary center, or even a large level 1 trauma center like Denver Health. There are places you go, (Pueblo, COS, Grand Junction) when you have a medical emergency because you have no other choice. They are good at stabilizing you at these places and at performing routine procedures in all specialties. There is a gap from those kinds of places and every tertiary center in cases which are complicated (weird autoimmune diseases, anything at all in healthy older old populations 75-80 y/o and above, sarcomas, a legion of others). These gaps are small and amount to one or two things the clinician doesn't know how to integrate into a weird case. Not because they aren't smart enough, but because in any one community certain cases only appear very rarely and there isn't enough repetition to learn and retain what you need.

Once you get to the regional centers there is very little seperation. And that seperation is based on innovation and research, not on the quality of medical care you will get. We're talking about the same level of separation that would be between someone who gets a 1550 on the SAT compared to 1600. To carry that a little further, the three big ones in the US would be 1600, that 2nd teir would be 1575 and all other regional places like CU would be 1500-1550. Community medical centers would be around 1300 - 1400 depending on a number of factors; still great, still absolutely essential to American medicine, just not good at non routine (nor should they be).

Also, the experts in large referral centers share the same quality as the community physicians, only in reverse. In my case, I will become one of 4 or 5 physicians in the US with pediatric, neuro, anatomic and clinical pathology boards. This means I will be uniquely qualified to read EXTREMELY rare cases which are only seen 10-15 times a year in the entire country. It also means I'll be so focused on a group of diseases that almost never happen, that I'll be uniquely UNqualified to do things like manage someone's high blood pressure medications.

These things make me excited and rambly.. sorry about that!

This is exactly right. If you create an extremely specialized center, you are then competing on a globally. You are no longer talking about referrals from only Denver or Colorado Springs, you are competing for onc patients from London with Dana Farber, Mayo, MD Anderson or Sloan-Kettering and for those 10-15 extremely rare cases per year. Those 10-15 cases per year, are the ones that distinguish the best from the rest.

If you get those high volumes from a global catchment area, drug companies pour money into your institution because you control the patients they need to run clinical trials for their new drugs. The fact that you have access to these experimental treatments in turn attracts more patients to your institution.

In my view, folks who are disappointed at the move from Denver are very short sighted. The reason University Hospital (and the others) moved was because there just wasn't enough room on a 25 acre campus to compete at that level because the cost of expanding was just too high. Aurora gave CU 240 acres for free, gave an equal amount to Children's and the VA, and built the infrastructure. Anschutz would not have donated several hundred million to the hospital if they stayed at 9th and Colorado. You can't attract the same faculty if you stay at cramped outdated facilities at 9th and Colorado. This is a 100 year move, and to complain that there aren't good transit connections there is besides the point. Who cares about the transit connection when your catchment area spans the globe. The hospital's competition isn't Denver Health, its the institutions Giovani mentioned. If you're a world class hospital, and one of five sights globally that has access to the latest tumor killing agent, patients will go to you whether or not you have a light rail stop. There are pieces of CU that play at that level but not the institution as a whole. But that's the vision.

I read a comment elsewhere that CU should have moved to the CPV. That's as foolish as saying DIA should have moved to the CPV because then it would be centrally located. Fitz will be for medicine to Colorado what DIA is to aviation.

The state should just make the med school private, but let it keep using the CU name. The state doesn't want to invest the money in it, but they want to retain all the control. There are plenty of top tier medical schools in the country that are private (see Mayo, Duke, Hopkins, Harvard).

[TonyAnderson]

Impressive shots Eeyore. You rarely get to see that many layers of mountains in a typical Denver skyline shot.

[Giovoni]

Originally Posted by A-G

This is exactly right. If you create an extremely specialized center, you are then competing on a globally. You are no longer talking about referrals from only Denver or Colorado Springs, you are competing for onc patients from London with Dana Farber, Mayo, MD Anderson or Sloan-Kettering and for those 10-15 extremely rare cases per year. Those 10-15 cases per year, are the ones that distinguish the best from the rest.

If you get those high volumes from a global catchment area, drug companies pour money into your institution because you control the patients they need to run clinical trials for their new drugs. The fact that you have access to these experimental treatments in turn attracts more patients to your institution.

In my view, folks who are disappointed at the move from Denver are very short sighted. The reason University Hospital (and the others) moved was because there just wasn't enough room on a 25 acre campus to compete at that level because the cost of expanding was just too high. Aurora gave CU 240 acres for free, gave an equal amount to Children's and the VA, and built the infrastructure. Anschutz would not have donated several hundred million to the hospital if they stayed at 9th and Colorado. You can't attract the same faculty if you stay at cramped outdated facilities at 9th and Colorado. This is a 100 year move, and to complain that there aren't good transit connections there is besides the point. Who cares about the transit connection when your catchment area spans the globe. The hospital's competition isn't Denver Health, its the institutions Giovani mentioned. If you're a world class hospital, and one of five sights globally that has access to the latest tumor killing agent, patients will go to you whether or not you have a light rail stop. There are pieces of CU that play at that level but not the institution as a whole. But that's the vision.

I read a comment elsewhere that CU should have moved to the CPV. That's as foolish as saying DIA should have moved to the CPV because then it would be centrally located. Fitz will be for medicine to Colorado what DIA is to aviation.

The state should just make the med school private, but let it keep using the CU name. The state doesn't want to invest the money in it, but they want to retain all the control. There are plenty of top tier medical schools in the country that are private (see Mayo, Duke, Hopkins, Harvard).

Letting CU med become private is a good idea to look at actually, though i doubt it's being seriously considered right now. If the ACGME actually gets tough with the school and threatens it's accreditation it may be something they are forced to look at though.

The transit problems will be solved eventually as well. Not as quickly as we would all like but compared to other large medical campuses around the country Fitz is really not that far from downtown.

[Eeyore]

Can't they build a light rail line on Colefax from downtwon east past the hospital then somehow curve north and hit DIA?

[wong21fr]

^Don't worry your pretty little head, Eeyore, we've already got it covered.

It's called FasTracks. Go google it and then look for the I-225 light rail corridor section.

[Eeyore]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

^Don't worry your pretty little head, Eeyore, we've already got it covered.

It's called FasTracks. Go google it and then look for the I-225 light rail corridor section.

Ok I won't.

[Okayyou]

Originally Posted by Pizzuti

*smacks forehead*

Alright guys, have your doom and gloom party. There is a fine line between desire and rational conclusions, and I suspect you're licking your chops to an extent for what you see the fun and crazy post-apocalyptic world in which everyone agrees with economic conservative philosophies after an extended recession takes out the Democrats. I also suspect that if you were less economically privileged and if you thought a coming recession/depression would really impact you personally, you wouldn't be so eager to see it as inevitable. I also suspect that if John McCain were president and promoting identical policies to Barack Obama's, you guys would be for it, because someone you like is in charge.

I would say the current 3-week decline in the market is very clearly driven by deflation and fear, as the U.S. dollar rises in value relative to everything else, as it inarguably has over the last 3 weeks with the Euro dropping, and the same total amount of wealth is represented by fewer dollars. The markets will necessarily drop under those circumstances. Add to that the fact that investors are temporarily pausing on investing more as they attempt to see how the winds have changed, oh, and that all the Glen Beck fans are pulling everything out of the markets and putting it in gold. That's a far simpler explanation than a bunch of abstract and speculative theories to tie our current economic situation to debt, or even more bizarrely, to the size of government.

"THIS DECLINE IS THE FIRST SIGN OF SOMETHING TO COME" is like saying that getting a cold is the first sign that you may have terminal pancreatic cancer.

It's a weird mental state in which somebody could consider an economy that is adding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month, is somehow also in decline for some reason, and that somehow it is all these abstract graphs, rather than the total amount that Americans are spending and producing, that defines our economic health.

I would also argue that the roughly $15 trillion U.S. economy is considerably more robust, and qualitatively different, than the $350B Greek economy (smaller than Wal-Mart) which is inflexible because it is fixed to the gold standard.

But that's just me.

A) Greece is not on the gold standard. They can't print because they are part of the EU and and the ECB, by law, isn't allowed to take action like the Fed with measures such as quantitative easing. If Greece was on the gold standard could you please explain how they issued the debt that they are now unable to pay? I would also like to hear you explain how a country can be on the gold standard and part of a shared currency like the Euro. Yes Greece is small, but what about Spain (read any interesting news about them today?)? Or the other members of the PIIGS?

B) Abstract charts??? Is that an oxymoron? Charts display numbers and figures that are concrete. Argue against the merits of the charts if you wish, but don't just dismiss them as ethereal figures made up to prove a point. An abstract item would be something like '

When everyone is in a good mood, the economy grows. When everyone is in a bad mood, it shrinks. That's the boom and bust cycle, which is totally artificial, not real.

C) Does it give you pause that someone such as yourself, with not even a basic understanding of remedial economics, is infatuated with dictating policy and how the system should be managed? Stick to playing guitar and we'll all be better off.

D) Everyone else's post had no mention or hint of political ideology. You, on the other hand, have the partisan glasses firmly glued to your face and are unwilling to see things from any other perspective. I will not bother further with numbers or charts because you have inexorably demonstrated that you are unwilling to move beyond Democrat = Good, Republican = Bad. You are unable to refute the concrete points of my argument and thus have turned to ad homonym attacks and straw men like Glen Beck. The partisan system is a form of control and it has you gleefully strung up in its gallows. Liberate yourself and you'll find a tremendous weight off your back.