Two broadcast programs recently examined the health care system in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Summaries of the coverage appear below.
NBC's "Nightly News": Hospitals and health clinics in New Orleans are struggling to meet the demand for medical care, more than a year and half after Hurricane Katrina, "Nightly News" reports. Patients can wait up to eight hours to see a physician and up to two days for a hospital bed, according to "Nightly News." The New Orleans metropolitan area has five fewer hospitals and about 2,600 fewer staffed hospital beds than it had before Katrina. At the same time, more New Orleans residents are without health insurance, as many lost jobs and employer-sponsored health coverage after the storm. Uninsured patients often seek treatment in hospital emergency departments or at no-cost clinics, where lines sometimes begin forming as early as 2 a.m. Hospitals are short on personnel, especially nurses, many of whom "have left for cities where there is better housing, better schools and better pay," "Nightly News" reports. Jack Finn, president of the Metropolitan Hospital Council of New Orleans, said hospitals have been recruiting nurses from the Philippines and India to try to address the shortage. Kevin Jordan, chief medical officer at Touro Infirmary, said, "Our waiting times, our access, the demand for services is literally boiling over at the brim" (Savidge, "Nightly News," NBC, 4/23).
Video of the segment and expanded NBC News coverage is available online.
PBS' "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer": In the second of a two-part report on the health care system in New Orleans, "NewsHour" examined the city's trauma system since Hurricane Katrina. Prior to the storm, the area's only emergency trauma center was at Charity Hospital, which closed after Katrina. A new trauma center, called the LSU Interim Hospital, officially opened at LSU Medical Center shortly after Mardi Gras in February. In the interim, temporary trauma care centers were set up at the New Orleans convention center and a former department store. According to "NewsHour," the re-establishment of trauma care in the city "exemplifies the long, slow recovery of the greater-New Orleans health care system," which "for the most part remains in a full-blown state of crisis." Nineteen months after the hurricane, six of 11 acute care hospitals still are closed and fewer than one-third of health care professionals have returned to the area. It is unknown how many residents of the News Orleans area are uninsured and in need of charity care. Sean Reilly, a board member for the Louisiana Recovery Authority, said state officials estimate a federal plan that would provide some uninsured residents with private health insurance does not include adequate funding and would leave several hundred thousand residents uninsured. A spokesperson for HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said additional federal funding would not be forthcoming but federal and state officials are exploring alternative arrangements for caring for the uninsured. Meanwhile, officials are considering options for replacing Charity Hospital with a new medical center that would be jointly operated by LSU and the Veterans Administration, which also lost facilities in the storm. The target opening date for the new center is 2011, and state officials are debating funding mechanisms (Dentzer, "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," PBS, 4/24).
Audio of the segment and expanded coverage are available online.
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