Hospital official: New Orleans health care infrastructure 'does not exist'

[rainbow4321]

So the mayor is wanting to send people back there...to a place that has **no** medical community?? Talk about setting people up for another disaster.


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3358913

This city's health care facilities have been shattered to an extent unmatched in U.S. history, and its hospital system faces grave challenges as residents begin returning, the vice president of the national hospital accreditation organization said today.

The official, Joe Cappiello, said several hospitals were probably damaged beyond repair by Hurricane Katrina, while some may try to rush back into business before conditions are safe. Others, while rebuilding, may lose doctors and nurses to communities elsewhere.

"Essentially the health care infrastructure of New Orleans is gone — it no longer exists," said Cappiello, who just completed a three-day mission to the city along with a colleague from the Illinois-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations

Cappiello expressed concern that some hospitals, desperate to get back into business for competitive as well as public-service reasons, might move too quickly, before all mold and contaminants from the flooding are removed. "I hope there's someone looking at all the health care assets and making sound decisions as the mayor faces overwhelming political pressure to let people back in," Cappiello said. "The federal government needs to go in there and make sure the hospitals are a safe environment before they're reopened."

[ecoflame]

1. Charity Hospital is down for the long-haul

I'll try to find the link. It specifically mentioned Charity Hospital and stated that the electrical boards were destroyed which pretty much eliminates that hospital opening any time soon.

Within this story provided: He cited Charity Hospital, where floodwaters continue to be pumped out, as one that seemed beyond repair.

[rainbow4321]

2. Here ya go...I'm reading a Charity article right now

There was a local doc on one of the cable channels that said the same...the facility will have to be shut down. The below link has a photo gallery of pix from inside Charity after it was finally evacuated.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3358515#

The hospital withstood the initial onslaught of the storm the next day relatively well. Virtually the entire city lost power early on, but the hospital's emergency generators in the basement kicked on. Windows blew out. Water driven into the building by the ferocious winds poured down through the interior, dropping ceiling tiles and light fixtures.

"We came to the conclusion that if we were going to get out, we were going to have to get ourselves out," he said. Some residents and nurses in his unit started getting "pissed" and frantically made calls on their almost useless cell phones to news media. They reached CNN, which broadcast the interview live on its Web site. It was seen by the owner of an air-ambulance service.

Among the doctors and nurses who had dedicated themselves to treating the most vulnerable, there was a growing unease that Charity was not high on the priority list. The private hospitals were being steadily evacuated. A stream of helicopters was landing at nearby Tulane. But not even a third of Charity's patients and only a few of its staff had gotten out.

By Friday morning, their fifth day in the hospital, only 100 patients had been evacuated from Charity. Odinet, the chief of residents in the emergency room, and his staff members were spent. For five days they had been carrying 400-pound generators, 5-gallon cans of diesel, pregnant women, and critically ill patients up and down the stairs in the putrid heat.

[ecoflame]

3. I just read that one....it's sad

isn't it?

I found the one I read earlier this morning; it was on CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/09/18/katrina.health.reut/index.html

In the middle of the CNN story: "Deblieux is concerned about plans to allow more than 180,000 people to return to New Orleans with only four area hospitals up and running, and only one of those in New Orleans proper.

Charity, the city's free public hospital, remains closed, its electricity panels destroyed by flooding. "Where will people get treatment?" asked Deblieux.

Some areas will continue to lack electricity and clean drinking water."