Dr. Phillip Gardner
St. Tammany Hospital in Covington did not flood, but the hospital did lose power. Dr. Phillip Gardner described the precautions the hospital had in place in the event of a hurricane:
"The hospital across the street, St. Tammany Parish Hospital, sustained very little damage from Hurricane Katrina. It did not sustain, if I recall correctly, any broken glass in the building itself. There was some water blown down a couple of the elevator shafts, which caused some problems with the elevator shafts being out of commission for a period of time afterwards."
"St. Tammany Hospital has a redundant generator system which is located well above sea level and either one of the generators had enough electrical output to run the entire hospital. We have a 10,000 gallon diesel tank and it was topped off right before the storm, and we had enough diesel to run all of our facility, including lights and the parking lot, for 3 ½ to 4 ½ days, depending on the number of kilowatts consumed. The electrical generator capacity was routed appropriately to all facilities. We had all of our CT scanners, MRIs, operating room lights; everything could run on that during the storm. This particular building, which is called the Heart Center, which is owned by the hospital but has private doctors’ offices and I think a cardiac rehab . . . clinic . . . was without electrical power. It was not part of the hospital grid system for the generator, so for approximately two weeks this medical practice could not practice at all."
Dr. Gardner described how the secondary well in St. Tammany Parish met the needs of not only the hospital but also the community:
"We had our own water well and water supply. Therefore, we could pump with our generator, and we monitored and made sure that we had the ability to meet safety standards in terms of codes and such. We were able to actually make water available to city residents."
Some of the participants advocated for a reformulation of reimbursement rates across the state. Dr. Gardner of St. Tammany Parish made the following point:
"We’ve had doctors that practice in St. Bernard who are getting reimbursed at the Orleans Parish rate . . . that come over here and get paid 5% less by Medicare, and most other reimbursements are reimbursed off of Medicare rates. You know, 10% or 130% of Medicare rates? So these physicians come over here and we’ve had some go back and say, "You know, I can’t afford to live over there."
"So we have had trouble in St. Tammany Parish recruiting physicians to replace some of the physicians who either left or died or retired because we don’t have the same reimbursement basis as Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard and Plaquemines, and that’s a real issue. . . To me it’s just a matter of fairness that St. Tammany Parish physicians are practicing the same quality of medicine, and we’re paying the same rates, and we are getting reimbursed 5% less."