Katrina displaces 6,000 doctors

Some physicians won't return to hurricane-ravaged areas, but others plan to rebuild their practices.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. Oct. 17, 2005.

Hurricane Katrina can add another victim to its list of destruction: The practice of Scott Needle, MD.

"Almost everything was ruined," Dr. Needle said of his solo pediatric practice in Bay St. Louis, Miss.

His office was waist-deep in water and muck. Ceiling tiles were torn down. Computer equipment and vaccines were destroyed.

Katrina displaced Dr. Needle and scores of other physicians from their practices and homes in Louisiana and Mississippi. A new study by a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researcher estimates that nearly 6,000 practicing physicians were uprooted -- the largest doctor displacement in U.S. history.

"Other than people being sent off to war, I can't think of any other similar migration," said Thomas C. Ricketts, PhD, MPH, a professor of health policy and administration at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, who estimated the number of displaced doctors.

To reach his estimate, Dr. Ricketts examined the number of practices in the 10 Mississippi counties and Louisiana parishes directly affected by Katrina's flooding. He used data from the American Medical Association, Federal Emergency Management Agency and other sources.

About two-thirds of the dislocated doctors practiced in three New Orleans-area parishes that were evacuated: Jefferson, Orleans and St. Bernard.

Many physicians scattered across the nation and took refuge with family and friends. Some will never come back and have taken jobs in places out of the path of hurricanes. Some are still deciding what to do, weighing job prospects against the cost of starting over amid Katrina's rubble.