Health care crude for many in New Orleans

It was the birthplace of jazz luminary Wynton Marsalis, rap mogul Master P and Mayor Ray Nagin. But most of all, it was the medical safety net of the city’s least privileged, a one-stop shop where an uninsured woman could give birth, have chemotherapy or have a stent implanted in her faltering heart all in a single, centrally located high-rise.

Although the Aug. 29 hurricane laid waste to much of the city and dispersed as many as 300,000 of its 500,000 residents, the stress on the health care system has not lessened, because many of the people who returned lost their jobs and their health coverage, said Smithburg. They tend to come in with more severe injuries, a reflection of the dangerous work by many who are rebuilding the city, he said.

For sure, there has also been progress, especially lately: In the last month, heavily damaged Tulane University Hospital reopened its downtown emergency room and 63 of its 235 beds. And on Thursday, Louisiana State University and the federal Department of Veteran Affairs announced the possibility of constructing a new medical complex.

For the time being, though, the closure of Charity has strained all of the area’s open hospitals, as they struggle to take in the cases deemed critical.

“The safety net has become more like a corridor,” said DeBlieux.

On one recent weekend night, that corridor emptied out into the crowded parking lot outside the Ochsner Clinic Foundation’s hospital, where head nurse Flo Smith frantically scrolled down a list of patients, trying to find beds for the ill.

“I’ve got every bed filled. Bear with me,” she yelled as a paramedic, sporting a tattoo of Yoda on his biceps, wheeled in a pale man lying motionless on a gurney. He left him parked in the hallway, alongside another gurney, this one cradling a man on a respirator.

One of the people the hospital cannot afford to move is 57-year-old Prescilla Ybarra, who was brought in by ambulance earlier that day from the convention center.

For days, her pelvic infection festered, until it became so inflamed she could no longer relieve herself by sitting down. “I put newspaper down on the floor and did it standing up,” she said, embarrassed.

Hospital staff say she waited too long, turning a treatable infection into a debilitating one requiring hospitalization. It’s a waiting game that more appear to be playing, as the buildingless hospital prepares to enter its sixth month somewhere other than the convention center.

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