Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (81 page)

 
11
the hospital set aside its opposition to Medicare
: “SBH Joins Medicare,”
The Triangle
. The hospital joined on November 1, 1969. Wilson noted that the census of seniors was thirty-one on November 3, fifty-two on November 10, and eighty-six on November 18. By January 1970 there were 123, according to Greene, p. 209.

 
12
Tensions persisted
:
Johnie Montgomery v. Southern Baptist Hospital
, EEOC charge no. 062-79-1208;
Sheila Bass v. Southern Baptist Hospital
, EEOC charge no. 062-79-1282;
Issac Frezel v. Southern Baptist Hospital
, EEOC charge no. 062-79-1905 and 062-80-0316;
Tyronne Smith v. Southern Baptist Hospital
, EEOC charge no. 062-80-0819;
Rita Robertson v. Southern Baptist Hospital
, EEOC charge no. 062-80-0845;
Dorothy Nelson v. Southern Baptist Hospital
, EEOC charge no. 062-80-1464. The hospital sued the EEOC and its chairman, Eleanor Holmes Norton, among other officials, in 1980 (
Southern Baptist Hospital v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, et al
, US District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana, 80-3972) for copies of investigative files in the seven cases. EEOC attorneys argued that releasing them “would permit the employer to intimidate, harass, and retaliate against employees” and interfere with ongoing proceedings against the hospital. The hospital lost the case on the latter grounds. For a brief essay on continuing challenges related to implementing integration in health care, see Smith, David Barton, “Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities and the Unfinished Civil Rights Agenda,”
HealthAffairs
, 24, 2 (2005): 317-324.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/24/2/317.full
.

 
13
sued Southern Baptist Hospitals
:
Issac E. Frezel v. Southern Baptist Hospitals, Inc.
, US District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana, 80-4603 (1980).

 
14
Flint-Goodridge Hospital
: See, for example, “The History of Flint-Goodridge Hospital of Dillard University,”
Journal of the National Medical Association
, 61, no. 6 (November 1969): 533–536; “Medicine: Negro Health,”
Time
, April 8, 1940;
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,763801,00.html
(requires subscription).

 
15
Surgery and chemotherapy had stalled
: Jannie Burgess’s family kindly facilitated access to her medical history and records.

 
16
First African American Bunny
: According to Linette Burgess Guidi.

 
17
All staff members
: Memorial Medical Center unpublished memo entitled “HURRICANE KATRINA—AUGUST 28, 2005.”

 
18
Unlike many others, Dr. Anna Maria Pou
: The section on Dr. Anna Pou’s history is drawn from interviews with Pou and others listed above, as well as from information provided by additional family members, medical colleagues, and friends of Pou who attended the “Friends of Anna” disaster-preparedness seminar and dinner/fund-raiser held in Houston, Texas, in May 2007. Pou’s attorney, Rick Simmons, informed me about the event when I first met with him to express an interest in writing about Pou. I attended with the permission of the organizers and paid for my own meal in accordance with journalism ethics standards. Many of Pou’s supporters were eager to share stories about her and expressed the hope that I would write something that went beyond the quick hit television pieces that focused exclusively on the acts that she was accused of without giving a deeper sense of who she was as a physician and person.

 
19
even her elementary-school
: Comment on
nola.com
weblog from “Tim Ballein of Westwego,” July 31, 2006 who identified himself as a St. Rita’s school classmate.

 
20
He treated patients
: See Kolb, Carolyn, “Life Along St. Claude Avenue,”
New Orleans Magazine
(August 2008);
http://www.myneworleans.com/New-Orleans-Magazine/August-2008/Life-Along-St-Claude-Avenue
.

 
21
One warm day in the late 1970s
: The shallow water drowning episode is depicted as retold to the author by John Zimmerman, the fully recovered drownee, on July 23, 2007.

 
22
a federal fugitive
: US Drug Enforcement Administration New Orleans Most Wanted Fugitives listing for Frederick Anthony Pou Jr., NCIC# W603770132;
http://www.justice.gov/dea/fugitives/no/24B099BA-E9B1-4EDA-982C-C01C8C83D102.shtml
. Frederick Pou Jr., was indicted by federal grand juries in Alabama and Louisiana; the Alabama indictment concerns the alleged importation of approximately 12,000 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia. See also:
USA v. Pou, et al
1:89-cr-00072-BH, US District Court Southern District of Alabama, May 9, 1989;
USA, et al, v. Land Baton Rouge
, 2:89-cv-02289-MLCF, US District Court Eastern District of LA (New Orleans), May 22, 1989;
United States v. Ricou Deshaw
, 974 F.2d 667 (5th cir.), no. 91-3131, October 14, 1992.

 
23
the hospital began to ration care
: Wysocki Jr., Bernard, “Hospital Sets Strict Rules to Limit Costs,”
Wall Street Journal
, January 12, 2004; Kinonen, Judie, “A Tale of ‘Rational Rationing,’ ”
UTMB Magazine
(Spring 2005);
http://www.utmb.edu/utmbmagazine/archive/05_spring/pog
.

 
24
“Dr. Pou, we regard this” […] “without additional pay”
: Copy of Pou’s signed relocation agreement, acceptance of offer, and employment offer cover letter, April 2, 2004.

 
25
Panepinto purchased
: Real property history record retrieved from
nexis.com
.

 
26
first hospital in the Southeast to purchase a “crash cart”
: According to hospital administrator Wilson, quoted in “Hospital Adds New Lifesaver,”
The Triangle
(March 1967), a reprint of a February 16, 1967
Times-Picayune
article. Also Wilson, Raymond C., “Thinking Out Loud,”
The Triangle
(June 1967) discusses a hospital expansion and adoption of high-tech aspects of “The Hospital of Tomorrow,” including piped-in oxygen and backup power.

 
27
“Many of us have trouble accepting the business motive”
: “Dr. Baltz: Excellence Is Our Strength,”
The Triangle
(February 1984).

 
28
Clarence Herbert
: See, for example, Lo, Bernard, “The Death of Clarence Herbert: Withdrawing Care Is Not Murder,”
Annals of Internal Medicine
, no. 101 (1984): 248–251.

 
29
“The ways and means of dying”
: “The Ethics of Life and Death,”
Spectrum
(Spring 1985): 23.

 
30
“We’ve got a duty to die”
: Excerpted remarks, Colorado Health Lawyers Association, March 27, 1984, transcribed from a tape provided by the
Denver Post
; transcript given to the author by Gov. Richard D. Lamm. See also: Kass, Leon R., “The Case for Mortality,”
The American Scholar
vol. 52, no. 2 (Spring 1983): 173–191. The then-largest circulation daily, the New York
Daily News
, carried Lamm’s comments with the headline: “Aged Are Told to Drop Dead: Colo. Gov Says It’s Their Duty,” March 29, 1984. Gov. Lamm received hateful telegrams, the e-mail flames of the day. The original
Denver Post
article substituted “you” for “we,” and its headline implied incorrectly that Lamm had asserted specifically that elderly or terminally ill patients should die. Gov. Lamm later won a correction from the
New York
Times
(“Correction,” November 23, 1993), which said that Lamm’s quote had been distorted in eight articles over the years. Lamm used the national attention to advance his argument that people who needed health care were being robbed of it because too much money was being spent on “high-tech procedures and machines” that too often led to “a living death” for patients with poor prognoses (Lamm, Richard D., “Long Time Dying: When ‘Miracle Cures’ Don’t Cure,”
New Republic
[August 27, 1984]). At a conference in 2010, I asked Lamm if he still held the same views, now that he had hit the three-quarter-century mark himself. He said with a smile that he’d go crawling and scratching his way to the hospital if he needed care. “I would, I think,” he agreed in a more formal, follow-up interview on October 7, 2011. He said it was natural for sick people to be desperate for treatment. “All the more reason a health care system has to assert sanity over that very human need.”

 
31
With the appearance of crash carts
: See Benjamin Weiser’s remarkable and still-fresh, five-part
Washington Post
series on end-of-life care dilemmas, including “ ‘Orchestration’ of a Death,” April 19, 1983; and “A Final Judgment on Quality of Life,” April 20, 1983. See also Kleiman, Dena, “Uncertainty Clouds Care of the Dying,”
New York Times
, January 18, 1985.

 
32
On January 15, 2005, Pou attended
: “Welcome New Members” and “Save the Date”
Medical Staff Newsletter, Memorial Medical Center Tenet Louisiana Health System
, November 2004. Also, photographs of Installation Banquet attendees, including Dr. Pou, January 15, 2005.

 
33
was in the process of selling
: “Tenet Announces Major Restructuring of Operations,” press release, Tenet Healthcare Corporation, January 28, 2004. See also, Klaidman, Stephen.
Coronary
(New York: Scribner, 2007).

 
34
much to celebrate
: Goux, L. R., “Memorial Achieves ‘Full Compliance’ in JCAHO Survey,”
Connections
(July 2004); “Memorial Shines in JCAHO Survey,”
Connections
(June 2005); and “You’re Tops, and We Have the Stats to Prove It!,”
Connections
(October 2004). Also: “Birthplace of New Orleans Cuts Ribbon on Renovation,”
Connections
(November 2004); “New Orleans Cancer Institute Celebrates Opening, Health Fair,”
Connections
(February 2004); and “New Orleans Cancer Institute Building Nears Completion,”
Connections
(August 2003).

 
35
As the storm approached
: The figures are a best estimate based on copies of the patient census and e-mail communications by hospital leaders. Numbers changed during the disaster as patients were admitted, discharged, or died.

 
36
2:11 A.M., WWL New Orleans Radio
: WWL kindly furnished digital audio of broadcasts, which were transcribed by the author and more so by the indomitable Rebecca Rabinowitz, who developed very limber fingers as a research associate at the New America Foundation in 2011. These transcripts are the basis for WWL excerpts from August 29, 2005, through September 1, 2005, quoted in the book.

 
37
It had fallen […] and never left
: Susan Mulderick described her history with the hospital in several depositions and stipulations in the case of
Elmira Preston, et al v. Tenet Health Systems Memorial Medical Center, Inc.
, Orleans Parish Civil District Court, 2005-11709. Memorial Medical Center Policy Number E-19, “Incident Command System,” dated June 21, 2002, describes the intended structure of the leadership system for disasters. However, interviews with staff members suggested that the plan was not followed exactly as written, and the book reflects their views on their jobs.