Hospitals, 1925-1988

This series is divided into two subseries, one devoted to Adriani's long career as an administrator and member of medical staff at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, and the second containing correspondence Adriani had with other hospitals and the Veterans Administration.

Adriani's career at state-run Charity Hospital in New Orleans lasted more than four decades. He arrived there in 1941, having been appointed the head of its Department of Anesthesia. He also organized a blood bank and became the head of the Department of Inhalation Therapy. Adriani rose quickly, becoming an assistant director of the hospital in 1950. In the 1960s, he became an associate director. Adriani resigned from his administrative positions at the hospital in 1969 when he was offered the directorship of the Food and Drug Administration's Bureau of Medicine, but returned to Charity when the offer fell through. He continued to serve at the hospital as a staff member and consultant for the last twenty years of his life. Despite the forty-five-year timespan of Adriani's involvement with the hospital, however, most of this material dates from the 1950s and 1960s.

The Charity Hospital subseries contains materials on different subjects accumulated by Adriani in his various administrative capacities at the hospital, consisting mostly of typed correspondence, memoranda and minutes. It has been divided into several subseries, and extensively documents relations between medical staff and administration. The researcher should be advised, however, that the material in the Charity Hospital subseries contains little or no data on Charity Hospital's patients except as directly relevant to Adriani's concerns.

The strength of the series is the material relating to long-range planning for Charity Hospital at New Orleans, a very large state-run facility for poor and indigent patients which found itself frequently beset by financial problems and low morale. In the 1960s, Adriani (serving as the hospital's top planning coordinator), other hospital officials, school officials and state officials planned and executed extensive renovations of the hospital. They also launched a drive to draw Charity Hospital and its affiliated medical schools (Louisiana State University and Tulane) together into one large medical complex, hoping to improve the hospital's public image.

Charity Hospital had always served as a teaching hospital to the two principal medical schools of New Orleans, Tulane and Louisiana State University (LSU). In the mid-1960s, however, both LSU and Tulane considered relocating their respective medical centers to locations outside New Orleans. This would have spelled disaster for Charity Hospital, since most of its medical staff (including Adriani) were also Tulane and LSU faculty members. In response to this threat to the hospital, hospital officials launched a major effort in the late 1960s to establish closer relations between Charity and the medical schools and to improve hospital facilities. They hired outside consultants to visit the hospital and to determine exactly what should be done to ensure further development. The most important of these was the Gulf South Research Institute (GSRI). Hospital and school officials then helped push a bill through the Louisiana state legislature in 1968 which founded and funded the Health Education Authority of Louisiana (HEAL), intended to serve as a forum in which these improvements would take place. Serving as Hospital Planning Coordinator for Expansion and Renovation during this crucial period (1966-1970) as well as the chairman of HEAL's Special Planning Committee and of Charity Hospital's Long-Range Planning Committee, Adriani spearheaded these joint initiatives. Major renovations of Charity Hospital then took place in 1968-1970, and it became the hub of the newly formed New Orleans Medical Complex. The sub-subseries on the Medical Complex contains much material on GSRI's consultant work and correspondence with hospital officials as well as on the formation of HEAL. The "Pre-Complex Relations" files showcase the evolution of plans to improve the hospital over the previous decade. There is also much correspondence with the architects hired by the hospital for the renovations (August Perez & Associates). The sub-subseries provides an exhaustive account of how one hospital transformed its long-range plans into reality. It would therefore be of great interest to those doing research on the history of public hospitals.

The files of the hospital's administrative committees also contain relevant material on hospital planning and administration. Administrative committees played a crucial role in the administration of the hospital, and Adriani belonged to many of them. These files, however, are of varying significance to the researcher: some files contain merely copies of material Adriani received in his capacity as top hospital administrator. At various times during his Charity Hospital career, Adriani chaired the Records Committee, the Long-Range Planning Committee, the Advisory Committee, the Infections Committee, and the Executive Committee's Subcommittee on Surgical Affairs. Accordingly, the files of these committees contain the most important material. They are arranged alphabetically by name of committee.