Hurricane Katrina Information for Mississippi Hospitals

Rule addresses Medicare financing for medical residents in disaster areas

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on April 7 issued an interim final rule with comment period that provides for continued Medicare financing of medical residents in training programs affected by natural disasters or public health emergencies. Effective immediately, the rule will apply retroactively to arrangements between home hospitals in the areas affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that temporarily closed parts of their residency programs and the host hospitals that accepted the displaced residents as well as to future disasters.

“The rule will enable residents from the affected hospitals to get Medicare support as they train at temporary host hospitals, and to regain their full residency funding when they return to their training programs,” said CMS Administrator Mark McClellan, M.D. The rule will be published in the April 12 Federal Register, with comments accepted until June 12. A final rule will be published later this year. For more information, see the news release.

[ via AHA News Now ]

Survey examines attitudes of New Orleans physicians after Katrina

Just over half of physicians polled in the New Orleans area believe it will take at least five years for the city’s health care system to return to its pre-Katrina state, according to a survey conducted by Opinion Research Corp. for the Touro Infirmary Foundation and Louisiana Hospital Association. Many of the physicians view the lack of residents as a serious threat to the health care infrastructure, and cite locating qualified staff and caring for the uninsured as top concerns. Most respondents also were not confident the government will help with the rebuilding of health care institutions. However, the vast majority of respondents were optimistic the city’s health care system will eventually return to its pre-hurricane state, and three-quarters with private practices in New Orleans expect it to take less than three years for their practice to return to normal levels. The poll surveyed physician practices within a 75-mile radius of New Orleans.

[ via AHA News ]

Health infrastructure on the mend in Mississippi disaster areas

The medical infrastructure is slowly recovering in the six Mississippi counties hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina, with all 14 specialty and acute-care hospitals in the region open and about 60% of the region's 775 clinics and solo practices fully operational, the state's Medicare quality-improvement organization said. The QIO, Information and Quality Healthcare, said about 70 clinics and practices are partially operational or doing business from a temporary location; 10 will not rebuild; and the QIO has been unable to contact about 160 clinics and physicians to ascertain their status. Some 36% of primary-care clinics in the six counties were destroyed or closed in the wake of the hurricane. An immediate problem for providers is a lack of patients, as thousands of residents fled the area and many of those remaining or returning don't have jobs, said James McIlwain, president and chief executive officer of the QIO.

[ via Modern Healthcare ]

Web site links displaced Louisiana doctors with patients, providers

A Louisiana quality improvement organization on Oct. 27 launched a Web site, www.FindLADocs.com, where Louisiana physicians displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita can register their current location and contact information. The site assists the physicians in communicating with their patients, their medical practice partners and other health care providers; and connects them with resources to help them return to their medical practice. It also seeks to help in identifying the state’s current and future physician workforce.

“A long-range objective is to develop a registry of physicians from across the state to provide better communication with providers in the event of a future emergency and to identify those physicians who may be willing and able to serve as first-responders in such an occurrence,” said Andy Leonard, M.D, consulting medical director for quality improvement organization Louisiana Health Care Review. The Louisiana Hospital Association is a partner in the Web site project.

[ via AHA News ]

20,000 doctors affected by Katrina, possibly up to 6,000 displaced

Hurricane Katrina and the city-swamping floods that drowned New Orleans and surrounding areas in a toxic gumbo appear to have dislocated up to 5,944 active, patient-care physicians, a new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study shows. That is the largest single displacement of doctors in U.S. history, and Hurricane Rita over the weekend will have boosted the total to an unknown degree.

The nearly 6,000 is the approximate number of physicians doing primarily patient care in the 10 counties and parishes in Louisiana and Mississippi that have been directly affected by Katrina flooding," said UNC's Dr. Thomas C. Ricketts. "Over two-thirds -- 4,486 -- of those were in the three central New Orleans parishes that were evacuated."

The number displaced also was more than one-quarter of the total number of new physicians who start practice in the United States each year, said Ricketts, deputy director for policy analysis at UNC's Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research and professor of health policy and administration at the School of Public Health.