Universal Omnitech School of Medicine
Written by: Tahoma
Looking for higher learning and sick people in the same place? Don't wanna take a loan for your Cholecystectomy at the Evo Metahuman-Architectural Haven? You're in luck, Universal Omnitech has you covered in the worst way possible.Second worst. We've all seen the leaked evidence of the Glenwood Amputator's 'studies'.Taking some inspiration that they probably shouldn't have from barber colleges giving free haircuts, Universal Omnitech attempted to quell some of the local outrage caused by their purchase of the UNC School of Medicine and its surrounding buildings by offering heavily discounted medical care to anyone wiilling to take their chances getting treated by med-students. Supposedly it's all done under supervision and with some of the trickier stuff either handed over to the professionals or done via skillsoft if the student has the appropriate 'ware, but for a lot of people that still isn't quite enough to justify having enough cash leftover to buy some NERPS from the campus merch-store. In spite of this controversial and legally-grey concept, the Campus/Hospital remains a standby for North Carolina and the CAS' medical education, taking full advantage of Raleigh's high percentage of degree-holders and biotech occupations to get first dibs on all the up-and-coming professionals in the medical field.
Purpose / Function
The Campus' stated goal is to further the fields of medical-learning by letting students provide for hospital patients under strict supervision, providing 'cheap and convenient' access to healthcare for Raleigh's lower economic brackets.
Alterations
Much of the old buildings of Raleigh remain as they once were, with a few new additions to more directly integrate the learning parts of the UNC into the hospital parts. Makes you wonder what it's like to sleep there...
Architecture
UNC was never my type of architecture, but Universal Omnitech really dropped the ball on their 'renovations'. Everything's in a faux greco-roman plastic pannelling that's more painful than the ER.
History
Post-Awakening, the UNC School of Medicine wasn't just doing well, it was doing really well for a while, being one of the medical institutions spearheading research into the new fronteer that was metahumanity. Unfortunately, their breakthroughs in the topic would pull to a complete halt when some buzz-kills walked in and started talking about things like "patient confidentiality" and "human rights".
Allegedly, one of the pediatric subjects from the time would later go on to become the Emerald City Ripper, but I don't have anything hard to support this, seeing as whatever school he was from would do their best to cover that little piece of trivia up...Financially, the UNC began hemmoraging badly from all the suits and out-of-court settlements over the decades, only kept limping along from all the grant-money it had accrued from doing the fronteer-experimentation in the first place. This left it a perfect target for the up-and-coming Universal Omnitech, seeing an opportunity for good property and even better PR. For a few years, UO was making bigger and more expensive offers, trying to snag the building before EVO took notice, until UNC's upper management caved and its real financial desperation came to light, forcing them to accept a final and insultingly low offer in the end.
To some folk, the three suicides that took place in the school's former heads was tragic. But to both the survivors and UO, it made for the perfect scapegoat to minimize the expense of post-purchase layoffsDespite recently facing trials for a nice handful of metahuman-rights violations, the public of Raleigh didn't take kindly to another old instutition falling into corporate hands, in spite of a healthy handful of 'donated' buildings and charity handouts. Getting shaky over the possiblity of having to tell UO that their purchase was a money-sink, David DuPont, the head-honcho of the corp's presence in NC made a hell of a gamble: He promised the citizens of Raleigh, SiNner or no, that their medical students would provide medical care to the people for practically nothing. It was a spur-of-the-moment promise, a desperate move from DuPont made without thinking it through, but Universal Omnitech now had to make it work or they'd be trapped with an unuseable hospital and a PR nightmare. In contrast to DuPont's wild gamble, the powers-that-be of UO took the sensible route and outsourced for PR consultancies.
We've heard the rumors, and while it's not impossible that the consultants were future members of the Horizon Project, there's nothing concrete
Nothing concrete, but the coincidences add up...Turns out, much to my endless dissapointment, that all Raleigh needed to accept this idea was an ad-campaign with a funny little mascot. Within a month, the students at the newly-christened 'Universal Omnitech/University of North Carolina School of Medicine' had too many walking lessons in medicine and pathology to know what to do with, and the building was once again a respected old institution in Raleigh, buying back all the old relics and such they sold off and then some. From then 'till now, the only incident of any interest was in '73 when a package of commercial-grade explosives were detonated in an unused oncology room on the campus hospital's upper floors. No staff or patients were directly injured or killed, but two patients in ICU died of cardiac-arrest in the evacuation, and four scorched bodies were found at the site of the blast, none matching any local DNA or dental records. Raleigh's underground would find out that the bodies were the founding members of a shadowrunning-group called The Cabinet and that the blast was an intentional attempt on their lives, but the public to this day believe it to be a terrorist attack on the building, which led to city council drafting in some anti-terror legislations to calm everyone down. Business continues as normal at the UO School of Meds, but now with a more comprehensive 24-hour security presence and mandatory searches at each entrance. Still, not a bad place if you don't mind squeaky teens doing your diagnosing.
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