Through Hell and High Water

CHAPTER 7: RESCUE PLAN FROM A TO Z

By Jane O. Hansen | Friday, May 12, 2006, 01:12 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Nashville — Within hours after the levees broke in New Orleans, executives of the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain were thinking ahead: What would they do with their stranded employees after airlifting them to safety?

A risky helicopter rescue of Tulane Hospital’s most critical patients was well under way on the roof of a parking garage. But more than 1,000 doctors, nurses, employees and family members were also imprisoned by the floodwaters that surrounded the hospital and rushed inside, drowning the emergency generators. The Hospital Corporation of America would act decisively, not waiting for — or even expecting — government help.

From its hushed, cushiony boardroom, the company early Tuesday launched a sweeping plan that would later be regarded as a textbook example of disaster response. Jack Bovender, the CEO and the son and husband of nurses, led his team of executives, each of whom had years of experience in health care administration.

First, their evacuated employees would need to be decontaminated, fed and given clothes and a cot to sleep on. HCA set up three shelters 135 miles west in Lafayette, La., at a dance studio, a banquet hall and a catering center. The company ordered pharmaceuticals and supplies, and called upon its army of employees from around the country to assist in the relief effort.

Each employee would receive a tetanus shot and a six-day supply of the antibiotic Cipro to stave off cholera and other bacterial infections. New underwear, scrubs, flip-flops, toiletries and towels would be issued. Employees would receive information about how to get their paycheck, relief assistance, federal disaster benefits and cash. The plan was so comprehensive that HCA even arranged to have tampons and children’s toys available for any employee who wanted them.

The company would use private aircraft to fly in dozens of nurses and staff from other HCA facilities. Through its temporary staffing agency, 170 nurses stood by, ready to be deployed from nine U.S. cities. Staff organized volunteers in Lafayette to cook a down-home Cajun meal of jambalaya for the weary evacuees’ first night of freedom.

Knowing that many employees would have lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina and the flooding, Bovender had floated the idea of housing them in a chartered cruise ship. When the CEO of the Hospital Corporation of America speaks, a hierarchy of willing officials listens. But in no time Tuesday they nixed the notion. They would later laugh when Bovender himself summed up the findings of their cost analysis: It would be cheaper to fly everyone to Chicago and put them up at the Ritz-Carlton.

The federal government, on the other hand, would embrace the idea. While desperate New Orleanians still clung to their rooftops, the Federal Emergency Management Agency signed a six-month, $236 million contract with Carnival Cruise Lines for three ships to house evacuees.

Critics in Congress later lambasted the decision, calling it a “sweetheart deal” for the cruise line. Even with the ships at full capacity, the cost to taxpayers would have been $1,275 a week to house each evacuee. The ships, however, would never become as popular as the government envisioned. By the end of September, they were only half full, according to two U.S. senators. Apparently people who had lost everything to the water didn’t want to go live on it.

Instead of a ship, on Tuesday afternoon, HCA reserved 1,500 hotel rooms in Atlanta, Houston, Orlando, Nashville and Dallas. It chartered two 727 jetliners to fly to Atlanta and Houston. It would purchase 200 one-way tickets to get people from there to the destinations of their choice.

Throughout the elaborate preparations, Mel Lagarde, the executive in charge inside Tulane, remained in constant touch with headquarters in Nashville. His cool, calm voice over the speakerphone inspired the HCA executives; their regular updates from Nashville in turn gave Lagarde confidence and hope.

By late Tuesday afternoon, all but two of the hospital’s 31 most critical patients were en route to hospitals in Houston; Pensacola, Fla.; and Lafayette, Covington and Alexandria, La. Still, Sam Hazen, president of HCA’s Western Group, was worried. Most of the helicopters in use were designed to take only one to five passengers at a time. The flights to Lafayette and Pensacola, where many of the critical patients had been taken, took as long as four hours round trip.

Hazen did the math. We need to turn over these helicopters faster, he said.

The Louis Armstrong International Airport was only an eight-minute helicopter ride away, less than 20 minutes round trip. What if they turned the airport, closed to regular traffic, into a staging area? HCA already had a relationship with the company that operated one of the private hangars. The helicopters could refuel there and load up with food, water and other supplies for the return trip to Tulane. They could drop their employees at the airport, then bus them to the shelters in Lafayette.

The plan would go into effect the next morning, Wednesday, Aug. 31.

That day, another turning point would come with the arrival on the roof of someone who understood helicopters, human behavior and life-and-death situations.

The HCA executives didn’t even know it yet, but their rescue operation was in desperate need of “The Man.”

ON SUNDAY: At Charity Hospital, a student nurse tends to two mystery patients. Chapter 8 of 22.

Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment |