Hurricane Katrina

The U.S. House of Representatives has begun a hearing on the still-unmet healthcare needs of New Orleans residents this week. At the hearing, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) said since Hurricane Katrina... Read more...

> Hurricane Katrina just about killed the healthcare system in New Orleans, according to a new study. Read more...

Years after the dark days of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Anna Pou finally can breathe a sigh of relief. This week, a jury refused to convict Pou of murdering hospitalized patients in the days after the... Read more...

Dr. Anna Pou certainly has been through hard times since Hurricane Katrina hit, particularly when the state of Louisiana arrested her for allegedly euthanizing four patients during the storm. Now,... Read more...

The ordeal is over for two New Orleans nurses who were arrested last summer on second-degree murder charges after Hurricane Katrina. The nurses, Lori Budo and Cheri Landry, had been accused of killing four patients at Tenet's Memorial Medical Center with a "cocktail" of lethal drugs. But the district attorney has now dropped the case, largely because the two testified in a grand …

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While the state of Louisiana would like to put a 484-bed teaching and research hospital in downtown New Orleans, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development isn't sure it's a good idea. HUD has agreed to release $74 million to buy land and prepare a design for the next Charity Hospital, which sat in downtown New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. But HUD isn't thrilled about the idea of giving the state an additional $150 million or so to build the hospital. In a …

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New Orleans physicians have been struggling since Hurricane Katrina, with practices and hospitals closed and the list of uninsured patients remaining high. Under these conditions, it's hardly surprising that they would want to leave the city. But the city doesn't want to see them go. So with the help of the state of Louisiana and the federal government, the city has developed a program which pays them to stay. The Greater New Orleans Health Services Corps has begun offering incentives of …

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The city of New Orleans' top medical official is angrily contesting new state data which conflicts with his findings that death rates have risen substantially since Hurricane Katrina. Officials with Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals yesterday released numbers which contradict an analysis by Dr. Kevin Stephens that mortality rates have spiked 47 percent since the disastrous storm. State officials concede that the city is still struggling, but said that Stephens' numbers are …

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Few hospitals have been through the kind of trauma faced by New Orleans facilities during Hurricane Katrina. No one at the city's Charity Hospital, in particular, can forget being trapped there with sick and dying patients as the city struggled to recover from flooding. But as hospitals must, given their 24-hour-a-day mission, the city's facilities are preparing to try again if faced with another emergency. Among other steps, they're digging wells, stockpiling supplies and buying …

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Hoping to rebuild services that were cut or reduced after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana State University officials have asked state legislators for more than $200 million above and beyond the existing state budget. Services went away, in part, because Katrina-related flooding closed New Orleans-based Charity Hospital, which provided a wide range of services to poor and uninsured. More than half of the money, about $122 million, would be used to rebuild the still-devastated New Orleans-area …

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