Touro Infirmary has opened a newly renovated $7.5 million outpatient surgery center on its Uptown New Orleans campus, doubling the facility's previous size just as the 174-year-old hospital marks its own milestone anniversary. The expanded center, located at 3525 Prytania St., now offers procedures across 12 medical specialties with six operating rooms and 15 pre- and post-operative bays.
The upgrade reflects a broader push at Touro to shift more surgical volume into same-day, outpatient settings, according to Biz New Orleans. Christopher Lege, CEO of Touro, said the hospital is growing its services to better serve patients and the community. The new center provides same-day discharge for patients who can safely recover at home, along with more private preparation and recovery spaces and the option for patients to have a support person with them during their visit.
Twelve Specialties Under One Roof
The revamped center covers a wide range of care, including plastic surgery, ophthalmology, vascular care, general surgery, gynecology, cancer care, urology, orthopedics and ENT, per the outlet's report. It also houses technology for high-intensity focused ultrasound, UroNav-guided procedures, Aquablation treatments, image-guided surgery and NanoKnife procedures — tools aimed at minimally invasive alternatives to traditional inpatient operations.
Touro itself has long provided surgical, cancer, women's, cardiac and rehabilitation care as part of its broader mission, and the hospital is a member of LCMC Health, the nonprofit system that oversees its capital investments. Greg Feirn, CEO of LCMC Health, said Touro has served New Orleans since 1852 and that LCMC Health will continue investing in its future.
A Hospital Built on an Indigent-Care Mission
Touro was founded in 1852 as a New Orleans community-based, faith-based nonprofit hospital, established by Jewish philanthropist Judah Touro, who endowed the original 28-bed facility with an explicit mandate to treat indigent patients, immigrants and enslaved people regardless of race or religion, according to the Historical Marker Database. The hospital relocated from its original riverfront site to Prytania Street in the Garden District in 1882, and that Uptown campus has remained its main hub for more than 140 years, per LCMC Health.
Touro's history of introducing new medical capabilities to the city predates this latest expansion by a century. The hospital brought the first neonatal incubators to New Orleans in 1922 and established the city's first hospital physical therapy department in 1929, according to LCMC Health's own timeline of the institution.
How Touro Fits Into LCMC's Regional Footprint
Touro operates as part of LCMC Health, formed after Children's Hospital New Orleans and Touro Infirmary merged in 2009 to create Louisiana Children's Medical Center, which later rebranded to build out its regional nonprofit network, per Wikipedia. The system expanded significantly in January 2023 when it completed a $150 million acquisition of three Tulane University hospitals from HCA Healthcare, a deal that cemented LCMC and Ochsner Health as the two dominant hospital operators in Greater New Orleans, as reported by Fierce Healthcare.
LCMC now operates 10 affiliated hospitals and generates more than $2.76 billion in annual net patient revenue, making it Louisiana's fifth-largest integrated health network, according to Definitive Healthcare. That financial scale underpins the kind of capital upgrade Touro just completed, and the new surgery center connects directly to Touro's main hospital building via an enclosed pedestrian bridge, according to CRE Collaborative, allowing patients and staff to move easily between outpatient suites and inpatient units.
Part of a National Shift Toward Same-Day Surgery
Touro's investment mirrors a nationwide trend away from costly inpatient stays and toward ambulatory surgical centers. More than 80% of surgical procedures nationwide are now performed in outpatient settings, with the ambulatory surgery center market reaching $45.6 billion across more than 12,000 facilities as of early 2026, according to Dialog Health, which projects outpatient procedure volume to grow another 21% over the next decade.
The financial case for the shift is significant: ambulatory surgical centers typically operate at 45% to 60% lower costs than traditional hospital departments, saving patients an average of $684 per procedure while cutting wait times by roughly 20%, per Exactrx. Louisiana had 159 active ambulatory surgical centers as of late 2025, placing the state in the middle tier nationally for outpatient surgical capacity, according to Definitive Healthcare, well behind leaders like California and Texas, which each have more than 800 such centers.
