Louisiana hospitals mend damaged roofs, coordinate patient transfers following Hurricane Ida

After weathering damaged roofs and orchestrating patient transfers, executives from Louisiana’s largest health system say their organization and others are moving into cleanup mode as Hurricane Ida moves past the hard-hit New Orleans area.

The storm made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane Sunday night and has knocked out power for more than 1 million people in Louisiana and Mississippi, the AP reports.

Alongside flooding and lasting high winds, the storm also damaged at least four Louisiana hospitals and left 39 medical facilities running on generator power, according to the report, citing Federal Emergency Management Agency information.

Monday morning, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra declared public health emergencies for Louisiana and Mississippi

"Hurricane Ida made landfall as an extremely dangerous storm and is carving a path of destruction that poses a significant threat to health and safety,” Becerra said in a statement. “These declarations and waivers help ensure that some of the most vulnerable residents of Louisiana and Mississippi—beneficiaries of Medicare and Medicaid—have continuous access to the care they need in the aftermath of this storm. We stand ready to provide additional public health and medical support to help impacted communities respond and recover.”

In a press call held late Monday morning, executives from Ochsner Health, Louisiana’s largest hospital system, said it has so far had no injuries among its patients or employees.

“We’re assessing all facilities across region, we’re assessing staff needs across the region and we’ll continue to have updates,” President and CEO Warner Thomas said during the press conference. “It’s a fluid situation, but our facilities are up and running. No patients injured, no employees injured, and we know ERs are going to start getting busier as patients come in in a post-storm environment. And we’re prepared to handle that.”

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Still, the system is facing varying degrees of structural damages and utility outages across its facilities.

“Probably every facility we have has some sort of roof issue, they have water intrusion, of different magnitudes,” Thomas said.

Thomas and Chief Operating Officer Mike Hulefeld said roofing teams are being deployed to these facilities alongside fuel and water trucks to maintain backup generators and water supply, respectively.

One hospital, Ochsner Medical Center – Kenner, had an issue with its backup generator during the night that has since been resolved, they said. All hospitals were outfitted with a 10-day stockpile of fuel for their generators, although the executives said they expect fuel trucks will be on-site by today or tomorrow to top off those reserves.

Thomas noted that Ochsner had decided to preemptively evacuate patients from St. Charles Parish Hospital and other behavioral care facilities yesterday. More recently, it also decided to evacuate patients from Ochsner St. Anne Hospital and Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center to other Ochsner facilities within the state due to damages from the hurricane.

All told, the system has transferred 65 patients internally, Thomas said.

At the same time, the CEO said Ochsner is answering a call from Terrebonne General Medical Center, one of its partners, to transfer about 100 patients.

“Speaking to their CEO, they have had significant roof damage, water intrusion to the facility,” Thomas said. “My understanding as far as water and HVAC cooling, they’ve got issues there and that’s why they’re working to evacuate the patients. Folks are safe … but certainly we’ll need to get the patients out of there today and to a different environment.”

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The executives said their system and others are in contact with state exchange networks and hospitals from other regions that have offered to help should greater need arise.

As of Sunday night, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said 22 nursing homes and 18 assisted living facilities had been evacuated prior to the storm. Other hospitals in the area such as Lady of the Sea General Hospital and Thibodaux Regional Medical Center had also faced structural damages or noncritical power issues by Sunday night and were planning to move patients once it became safe to do so, the AP reported.

But beyond facility repairs and patient transfers, the Ochsner executives said they were looking ahead to the long-term challenges of an emergency response.

Chief among these is the well-being of its workforce, “hundreds or thousands” of whom might return home only to find building damages and cut utilities.

“We’re working on identifying housing for our employees,” Thomas said. “We did this post-Katrina—we identified hotels, we put our employees in hotels. But in New Orleans there’s no power or water, so putting them in hotels in New Orleans isn’t going to work. We’ve got to identify other opportunities and that is ongoing.

“And then we continue to think about every way we can take care of the other personal needs and support our employees. We’re already working on getting in significant supplies around toiletries, personal items, because we know our employees are going to need these for themselves and their families,” the CEO said.

The major concern will be the patients arriving at hospitals with “typical hurricane injuries” during the coming days, the executives said.

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These cases are often related to orthopedic traumas such as hip fractures and result from people falling off roofs and ladders, they said. The hospitals will also see a small influx of patients with typical concerns that were delayed due to the emergency.

The curveball here that many have worried about is whether hospital units hit hard by COVID-19 patients will be able to handle the hurricane admissions or a potential spike in new infections.

The executives said Ochsner hasn’t felt a major hit to its bed and ER capacity so far, thanks in large part to much of Louisiana’s population evacuating to other states prior to the storm.

“When they come back it might pose a different set of challenges, but for now we’re fine,” Hulefeld said.