Charlene Gonzalez wanted to get out of town before Hurricane Katrina hit, but because she was a nurse at the only hospital in this low-lying waterside town, she would lose her job if she didn’t stay at her post.
Then, after Gonzalez, her husband and more than 100 other employees and their families spent days trapped by floodwaters, Universal Health Services, the Pennsylvania-based corporation that owns Chalmette Medical Center, told its employees that they could count on only two more weeks of pay.
“They left me to die,” Gonzalez said. “And now nobody’s even called to say `Thank you.’ Nobody’s even called to say `I’m sorry.'”
In the days following Katrina, southeastern Louisiana’s hospitals became isolated deathtraps as power failed, waters rose and severely ill patients could no longer survive. Officials haven’t accounted for all the patients at the two-story Chalmette hospital, but medical staffers said at least four died, three of whom already were critically ill and had do-not-resuscitate orders.
But it is Universal Health Services’ behavior after the waters cleared that has infuriated residents of this devastated suburban region of 65,000 residents, where every neighborhood was inundated by floodwaters.
Officials at UHS say the anger is understandable in the aftermath of such a catastrophe, but they contend they did everything they could for their patients and employees. They say they tried to evacuate their hospital–albeit at least a day after emergency officials say they urged it –but that it was too late to get all the patients out.
The company, which had $3.9 billion in revenue last year and bills itself as the nation’s third-largest hospital management corporation, said it is trying to place employees with some of its 84 other facilities and has started a foundation to aid those who lost their homes.
UHS says on its Web site that the 2,800 employees at its three New Orleans-area hospitals, including the 900 who worked at Chalmette, will be paid only through Saturday and receive insurance coverage through the end of October.
Marc Miller, a vice president at UHS, said the cutoff of pay on Saturday could be subject to change. “This is a highly unusual situation,” Miller said. “No final determination has been made on salary and benefits.”
Jon Sewell, the hospital’s chief executive, said that as he and his employees were trapped in the hospital the most common question people asked was: Will I have a job?
Three weeks later, he has no answer for his workers.
Dr. Lee Domangue, the director of emergency medicine, said that late on Friday, Aug. 26, he heard the news about the storm turning toward New Orleans and made a frantic call to hospital administration.
“I said `Close the hospital,'” he recalled. “`You have a category five storm going right over you. You have a medical obligation to evacuate.'”
Domangue said the answer was no. Sewell said he doesn’t recall the conversation, but St. Bernard Parish emergency officials said they also pleaded with the hospital to evacuate fast.
“It was nothing less than depraved indifference,” said Dr. Paul Verrette, medical director of the parish office of emergency preparedness.
After meeting Saturday with parish officials, Sewell said he was convinced that the hospital needed to evacuate. As in prior storms, intensive-care patients were taken out first. Sunday morning, less than 24 hours before Katrina hit, the hospital began evacuating other patients.
But with medical facilities in New Orleans also scrambling to relocate their patients, Chalmette could not find any beds in Louisiana or surrounding states. Late Sunday, the hospital moved the 50 or so remaining patients to the second floor.
With patients still present, those employees on hand were required to remain on duty, something Chalmette hospital officials say is standard emergency procedure in the industry. About 150 staffers and their families hunkered down.
For the next three days after the hurricane hit, up to 400 evacuees took shelter on the second floor of the hospital.
Charlene Gonzalez’s three children have been promised by their employers that they won’t lose their jobs, as has her husband, who works at the port of New Orleans.
“Everybody’s been taken care of,” she said, “but UHS has left me high and dry.”
