Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
Hurricane Katrina radically altered the city's health system.
Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
Charity Hospital provided the vast majority of care to New Orleans' indigent patients before flooding by Hurricane Katrina led to its closure. A grassroots movement calling on Louisiana to refurbish and reopen the hospital is unlikely to succeed. [Photo by AP / Wide World Photos]
Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
An aerial view of Tulane Avenue shows Charity Hospital and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center of New Orleans. The facilities were closed after Katrina. Construction broke ground in June on a 1.7 million-square-foot VA hospital. In January, a federal arbitration panel approved $474.8 million to help build a proposed $1.2 billion, 424-bed hospital downtown to replace Charity. The state has promised an additional $300 million, while the remainder must be raised on the bond market. [Photo by Chris Graythen / Getty Images]
Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
Eighty percent of New Orleans was flooded when the city's levees broke after Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005. [Photo by David J. Phillip / epa / Corbis]
Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
Nearly 2,000 patients were stranded in the 11 New Orleans hospitals surrounded by 15 to 20 feet of Katrina floodwater after the levees were breached. Many patients and staff members were moved out of the hospitals by boat. [Photo by Michael Appleton / NY Daily News Archive / Getty Images]
Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
Workers set up a makeshift emergency department in a vacant department store shortly after Charity Hospital's closure, when access to emergency care was scarce. Nearly three-quarters of Greater New Orleans hospitals have reopened since the hurricane. Charity still provides outpatient care in the converted shopping center. [Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images]
Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
Technicians use a portable trailer to take magnetic resonance images in May 2006 at Charity Hospital's makeshift emergency department. The Interim Louisiana State University Public Hospital, a separate facility near Charity, reopened in November 2006 and started offering Level 1 trauma services in January 2007. [Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images]
Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
Robert Chugden, MD, directs the emergency department at West Jefferson Medical Center in the New Orleans suburb of Marrero. West Jefferson was one of only three Greater New Orleans hospitals that remained open after Katrina struck. Dr. Chugden sees Katrina's lasting impact in his emergency department, where the proportion of privately insured patients has fallen by nearly 40% since the storm. "With fewer doctors, both primary care and specialty doctors, the remaining ones have become more selective in the number and types of patients that they take," he said. As a result, indigent patients are more likely to access basic care through the emergency department, he said. [Photo by Sean Gardner / www.nolaimages.com]
Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
A July 2006 sign at Memorial Medical Center in Uptown New Orleans touts that the nearly 4,000 area physicians displaced by Hurricane Katrina are beginning to return. The most recent data show that Greater New Orleans has 84% of the licensed physicians who were practicing before Katrina hit. [Photo by Lee Celano / Reuters / Corbis]
Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
Michael S. Ellis, MD, returned to practice in New Orleans after being displaced. Katrina destroyed the converted house he and a partner owned and used as an office in Chalmette, a New Orleans suburb. Staying in Houston with relatives when the storm hit, the otolaryngologist viewed real-time images of flood damage on the Internet. "The whole of my building was underwater," he said. "I immediately started looking at what am I going to be doing with the rest of my life -- it was not going to be there." In his 60s, Dr. Ellis could not afford to take on the hundreds of thousands in loans to rebuild his practice and replace his equipment. He practiced in a Charlotte, N.C., suburb for two years before returning to New Orleans as an employed physician at Tulane University Medical Center. Why did he return? "This is home," he said. [Photo by Sean Gardner / www.nolaimages.com]
Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
With Charity Hospital's closure after Katrina, a loose network of more than 90 neighborhood clinics has been established to help deliver primary care to the city's indigent patients. This clinic in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward, an area devastated by the levee failure, opened in February 2007. It was the pre-Katrina home of Patricia Berryhill, RN, the clinic's co-founder. [Photo by AP/Wide World Photos]
Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
Robert M. Post, MD, medical director of the Daughters of Charity Health Centers, said the nonprofit's new 30,000-square-foot facility in the Carrollton neighborhood will provide low-cost access to primary care. The clinic also will offer an on-site pharmacy and access to dental care and much-needed mental health services. The Daughters of Charity clinics, owned by the Catholic nonprofit Ascension Health system, are certified as patient-centered medical homes by the National Committee for Quality Assurance. "It's an improvement for [New Orleans] to ensure access to patient care as well as neighborhood-based care," Dr. Post said of the more than 90 community clinics that provide care to a fifth of the city's patients. "And the medical home in and of itself will improve outcomes. Everyone understands what that means now." [Photo by Sean Gardner / www.nolaimages.com]
Health care in New Orleans, before and after the storm
Patient Carmen Souhlas leaves Tulane University's mobile medical unit, while Marcell Watkins waits for his appointment. The recreational vehicle was parked outside a Winn-Dixie grocery in New Orleans' Gentilly neighborhood. Flooding by Katrina devastated the area, where physicians are still in short supply. Watkins was examined by internist and pediatrician Chukwunomnso Dennar, MD, medical director and physician on board the mobile medical unit. [Photo by Sean Gardner / www.nolaimages.com]
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Posted with the Aug. 16, 2010 issue - Accompanying article: Katrina's legacy: Moving beyond the storm
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