Did medical liability prevent doctors from treating patients in New Orleans?

“Refugees from New Orleans died when private doctors were ordered to stop treating them because they were not covered by US government medical liability insurance, two US surgeons say.

Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon from Pennsylvania, was told by a senior US Coast Guard officer representing the embattled Federal Emergency Management Agency that he must leave the overstretched disaster relief hospital at New Orleans airport.

He had applied a chest compression after a patient died and was turning to another critically ill woman at the triage reception area on the airport tarmac when he was summoned to see Captain Art French, the doctor in charge of the hospital . . .

. . . ‘[Captain French’s] words were: ‘We don’t have any way to do credentialling and no way to ensure tort liability coverage.’ How anyone could utter those words in the middle of a catastrophe I do not know.’

Dr Perlmutter said he begged to be allowed to work until he could be relieved by an agency doctor but was told this was impossible.”