Closed hospitals and medical offices are shattering the health care system post-Katrina:
Studies suggest that hundreds of doctors never returned. And some of those who did, especially specialists and young physicians, are leaving, said Dr. Ricardo Febry, president of the Orleans Parish Medical Society, which has lost more than 200 of its 650 members. The exodus has “been a steady trickle,” Dr. Febry said.
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- Ann Coulter on doctors and lawyers
- Physicians sue Louisiana over Hurricane Katrina reimbursement
- Dr. Anna Pou fights back
- Parents sue hospital . . .
- Canada: "Bring on two-tier health"
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Two words: Anna Pou
Would you want to practice in a system as corrupt as that?
amen to that.
they should invite Foti to speak at the Orleans Parish Med Society meeting.
I guess that is more accurate, yes. Charles Foti. The place is a corrupt sewer, and I would not consider working there.
It’s not just Foti, although obviously that’s a problem. It’s the fact that the levees are patched in places, not fixed. Another storm almost certainly means another levee break and catastrophic flooding. And since Katrina, we have an estimated 30k+ illegal aliens in New Orleans, and the language barrier – not to mention trying to receive payment for services from the uninsured – makes delivering care expensive and problematic.
Laura lists some of the real problems. I don’t think number of physicians is the actual problem. Louisiana lost 5% of it’s population and 4% of it’s doctors, actually the physician loss is slightly less than the population loss. The poor there have been conditioned for generations to expect free care at Big Charity and the private medical providers have always had it there as a backup to relieve the uncompensated care load. It is an area with an extraordinarily large percentage of poor in much worse than average health. The delicate balance of relationships within the various medical systems that allowed it all to work has been disrupted. If it were just a shortage of docs, the ones there would be doing well, but the scuttlebutt is that they can’t collect.
The casinos are doing well though and mostly off local residents.
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