I have close relatives who WERE in that hospital, and one other. Medical personnel. They were very available- one even swam that filthy water rescuing people and did triage at University until he was airlifted out to another hospital. We didn't see him for over a month!"I" was 'avaliable' for my 86 year old father who was in a wheelchair, with Alzheimers and a feeding tube. We couldn't come home for a month- and when we did, he immediately picked up the infection that killed him before the holidays. If he had been hospitalized during Katrina, I planned to stay with him- even tho I had been told I wouldn't be allowed to.
The hopeless conditions inside the hospitals didn't have to happen! In the days before the storm, generators could have been brought in- truckloads of supplies as well!
Hospitals are profit producing and every one here- in a city that has ALWAYS flooded even without hurricanes- had their generators in basements. Flooding and loss of power to the hospital is a danger every hurricane season. In all the years those hospitals have existed, why haven't they put their generators above the first floor? A flooded city notwithstanding, power would have made all the difference . These same hospitals are preparing to open again, and it has not been reported that the generators have been moved from the basements!
There is NO reason for hospitals not to be prepared for what they KNOW will happen in a hurricane! Lay in extra of everything...get critical patients out before the storm. We get supplies to the Third World in days, hospitals in an American city couldn't have stocked up on everything??
Now your suggestion that the patients families abandoned them. How odious!
Those patients families evacuated TRUSTING that their loved ones were in a place where they could get the care they needed- and paid for! Do you think people could have evacuated with terminally ill people, people on dialysis? Taking many of them out of hospitals would have been a certain death sentence IF the doctors had released them.
Bottom line is- the hospitals were not prepared for a hurricane, and there is no excuse for it. People paid to be cared for, not killed; suffering or not. There is no ' kill me if I suffer too much' clause on an admit form- no Jack Kevorkian wing.
Doctors take an oath to 'do no harm'. The terrible conditions resulted from non-preparation on the hospital's part, everyone suffered because hospitals in a below-sea-level city didn't want to spend the money to prepare their facilities. Every hospital in this city could have been locked down with power and all needed supplies until they were evacuated!
It is heroic that as many medical people stayed as did- including my relatives. I've heard first person horror stories you cannot begin to imagine. But staying doesn't mean they we can't question what may have happened; and staying in the future shouldn't mean they will be beyond question.