New Orleans Health Care Still in Shambles

WASHINGTON - The city of New Orleans has only 456 staffed hospital beds, compared with 2,269 before the city was struck by Hurricane Katrina, according to government auditors who say rebuilding the health care system will be vital for bringing people back.

While emergency care is available, auditors noted that patients at two hospitals waited up to two hours to be unloaded from ambulances. They also found patients being kept and treated in the emergency room because beds weren't available elsewhere.

The Government Accountability Office said several planning efforts are under way about how to rebuild that system, but no clear consensus has emerged.

The lack of clarity stems in part from the uncertain estimates of how many people plan to return. The latest estimates put the city's population at about one-third of the 485,000 people who lived there before Katrina hit.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060328/ap_on_re_us/katrina_hospital_care

the public health care infrastructure of orleans and st. bernard were destroyed by katrina

i believe that public (free) health care for st. bernard parish ends this week, if you need health care in st. bernard after that, you had better be insured -- and i am not sure where you would go for treatment

st. tammany as a consequence is just packed, packed w. people seeking health services, altho they'll only get them if they have insurance as far as i know, a simple doctor's appt is something else, the place is hopping and the doctor has to run all day long to see everyone -- and that's the insured patients, i presume jefferson parish would be the same way

heaven only knows where the uninsured who relied on the public health care system go

Makes sense.:wtf:

people are eager to return but if you relied on public health system for care, it is not a good time in my humble opinion

but it seems like they'd at least have a handle on any future plans by now. It must be very frustrating for people who do want to return.

and in a situation like New Orleans has faced, and will face with the coming hurricane season, that is a recipe for disaster.

don't think you can blame that one on katrina altho some of it may be blamed on ronald reagan as it happened in many other states as well

the state mental hospital at mandeville was once good enough for earl k. long, the governor, who was supposedly a paranoid schizophrenic, yet i remember in the early 90s it had fallen into such bad shape that they didn't even have clothes for everyone and were soliciting the public for donations, heck, at the moment no idea if it's operating at all any longer

as a nitpick --

i may be in the minority here but i object to people being labeled as in need of mental health care because something bad happened to them, look, when my house was smashed in a storm, no counselor talking with me no pill could change what had happened, people are entitled to grief and anger without it being therapied away

i would not presume that we here need any more mental health care than people of any other state -- altho i would not either presume that we need less!

yeah, we need something, so your main point is correct

just venting a little here, i guess :-)