HHS offers physicians funds for Katrina care

A new government report shows that New Orleans' health care community is still devastated, and questions about the future are hindering rebuilding.

By Elaine Monaghan, AMNews staff. April 17, 2006.

Washington -- Physicians who treated uninsured victims of Hurricane Katrina are eligible to receive a slice of a $1.5 billion pie in this year's federal budget.

The funds will deliver a small shot in the arm to New Orleans, whose health care infrastructure remains severely damaged and where there is staff for only one-fifth of pre-Katrina acute care beds.

Most of the funds will go to state Medicaid programs, but some is to be set aside for uncompensated claims by doctors in states that took in the most evacuees.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told AMNews that arrangements had been worked out with states that had asked for help compensating doctors: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. The doctors should contact state Medicaid agencies about recouping losses, a CMS spokeswoman said. The funds cover patients who were ineligible for Medicaid and had no other insurance.

"Every little bit counts," said Yarnell Beatty, director of legal and governmental affairs at the Tennessee Medical Assn. "If they can get back money they didn't expect, that's a little gravy."

In Tennessee, 29 practices treated 817 evacuees without being paid, at a collective loss of $338,129, he said. The association was determining whether all or some of this would be covered.

One physician in Kingsport provided $4,160 in uncompensated care. But one clinic stood to recoup six-figure amounts, Beatty said.