Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (2 page)

Fran Butler—Nurse manager of fourth-floor west and south medical and surgical units

Sandra Cordray—Community relations manager; designated communication leader for Hurricane Katrina

Mary Jo D’Amico—Operating-room nurse manager

Curtis Dosch—Chief financial officer Sean

Fowler—Chief operating officer

L. René Goux—Chief executive officer

David Heikamp—Laboratory director

Father John Marse—Chaplain

Susan Mulderick—Nursing director, head of emergency preparedness committee, designated incident commander for Hurricane Katrina

Karen Wynn—Nurse manager of the intensive care units; head of hospital ethics committee

Eric Yancovich—Plant operations director and part of emergency leadership team

Tenet Corporate Officials

Michael Arvin—Business development director for Texas–Gulf Coast region

Trevor Fetter—President and chief executive officer

Bob Smith—Senior vice president for operations in the Texas–Gulf Coast region

LifeCare

Seventh Floor

Patients and Their Family Members

Hollis Alford—66

Wilmer Cooley—82

Emmett Everett—61
      Carrie Everett, wife

Carrie (Ma’Dear) Hall—78

George Huard—91

Alice Hutzler—90

Elvira LeBlanc—82
      Mark and Sandra LeBlanc, son and daughter-in-law

Wilda McManus—70
      Angela McManus, daughter

Elaine Nelson—90
      Craig Nelson, son
      Kathryn Nelson, daughter

John Russell—80

Rose Savoie—90
      Doug Savoie, grandson
      Lou Anne Savoie Jacob, daughter

Ireatha Watson—89

LifeCare Nurses and Therapists

Cindy Chatelain—Registered nurse

Andre Gremillion—Registered nurse

Terence Stahelin—Respiratory therapist

Hospital Administrators, Directors, and Nonclinical Staff

Tim Burke—Administrator for LifeCare Hospitals of New Orleans; not present at hospital for the storm

Steven Harris—Pharmacist

Gina Isbell—Nursing director, LifeCare Chalmette campus, relocated to Baptist (Memorial) before the storm

Kristy Johnson—Physical medicine director

Therese Mendez—Nurse executive

Diane Robichaux—Assistant administrator, incident commander

Dr. John Wise—Medical director; absent for the storm

LifeCare Corporate Officials

Robbye Dubois—Corporate senior vice president for clinical services; in Shreveport, LA

People Involved in the Investigation

Louisiana Attorney General’s Office

Attorney General Charles Foti

Julie Cullen—Assistant attorney general, head of criminal division

Virginia Rider—Special agent, Medicaid Fraud Control Unit; lead investigator, Memorial case

Arthur “Butch” Schafer—Assistant attorney general, Medicaid Fraud Control Unit; lead prosecutor, Memorial case

Kris Wartelle—Public information director

US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General

Artie Delaneuville—Special agent

Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office

Eddie J. Jordan Jr.—District attorney

Michael Morales—Assistant district attorney; lead prosecutor, Memorial case

Craig Famularo—Assistant district attorney, senior to Morales

Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office

Dr. Frank Minyard—Coroner

Forensic Consultants

Dr. Michael Baden—Forensic pathologist, New York City

Dr. Frank Brescia—Oncologist, palliative care specialist, Medical University of South Carolina

Arthur Caplan—Bioethicist; chairman, Department of Medical Ethics, and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania (until 2012; now at New York University)

Dr. Steven B. Karch—Cardiac pathologist; former assistant medical examiner, San Francisco, CA Dr. Robert Middleberg—Laboratory director, National Medical Services, Inc.

Dr. Cyril Wecht—Forensic pathologist; coroner, Allegheny County, PA (until 2006)

Dr. James Young—Special advisor to the Government of Canada on emergency management; president, American Academy of Forensic Sciences (2006–2007); former chief coroner of Ontario, Canada

Others

Government Officials

Louisiana governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (2004–2008)

US senator Mary Landrieu (since 1997)

Mayor Ray C. Nagin, City of New Orleans (2002–2010)

Emergency Responders and Experts

Knox Andress—Health resources services administration district regional coordinator for part of northwest Louisiana, based in Shreveport; registered nurse at CHRISTUS Schumpert Health System; communicated with LifeCare corporate officials during the disaster

LTJG Shelley Decker, US Coast Guard (now LT); at emergency command center, Alexandria, Louisiana

Cynthia Matherne—Health resources services administration district regional coordinator for part of southeast Louisiana, including New Orleans; based at the emergency operations center in New Orleans City Hall; communicated with Tenet Healthcare officials during the disaster

Michael Richard, US Coast Guard Auxiliary; at emergency command center, Alexandria, Louisiana

Dr. Robert Wise—Vice president, division of standards and survey methods, Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, JCAHO (now medical advisor, division of healthcare quality evaluation at the organization, renamed the Joint Commission)

Colleagues and Patients of Dr. Anna Pou

Dr. Daniel Nuss—Chairman, Department of Otolaryngology; head and neck surgery, Louisiana State University Health Science Center

James O’Bryant—53, patient of Dr. Anna Pou
 Brenda O’Bryant, wife
 James Lawrence O’Bryant, son
 Tabatha O’Bryant, daughter

Defense Attorneys

Eddie Castaing—Attorney for Lori Budo

Richard T. Simmons Jr.—Attorney for Dr. Anna Pou

NOTE TO THE READER

THIS BOOK RECOUNTS what happened at Memorial Medical Center during and after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and follows events through the aftermath of the crisis, when medical professionals were arrested and accused of having hastened the deaths of their patients. Many people held a piece of this story, and I conducted more than five hundred interviews with hundreds of them: doctors, nurses, staff members, hospital executives, patients, family members, government officials, ethicists, attorneys, researchers, and others. I was not at the hospital to witness the events. I began researching them in February 2007 and wrote an account of them in 2009, copublished on the investigative news site ProPublica and in the
New York Times Magazine
: “The Deadly Choices at Memorial.”

Because memories often fade and change, source materials dating from the time of the disaster and its immediate aftermath were particularly valuable, including photographs, videotapes, e-mails, notes, diaries, Internet postings, articles, and the transcripts of interviews by other reporters or investigators. The narrative was also informed by weather reports, architectural floor plans, electrical diagrams, and reports prepared by plaintiff and defense experts in the course of civil litigation; and I visited the hospital and other sites depicted in the book.

Dialogue rendered in quotation marks is reproduced exactly as it was recalled in interviews, or is taken directly from transcripts and other primary sources. If one person recounted an important conversation, I generally attempted to contact all participants, but some declined to speak, and at times memories were at odds. The main text and Notes highlight areas of significant dispute and indicate the sources of quotes when they do not derive from interviews with me. Typographical mistakes are preserved in quoted e-mails to give the reader a sense of the urgency involved in their production.

This book relates the thoughts, impressions, and opinions of the people in it, perhaps the most fraught aspect of narrative journalism. Attributed thoughts or feelings reflect those that a person shared in an interview, wrote down in notes, a diary, or a manuscript, or, less commonly, expressed to others whom I interviewed. As any book reflects the interwoven interpretations and insights of its author, I have tried to make these distinct. All errors are mine.

PART I
DEADLY CHOICES

Blindness was spreading, not like a sudden tide flooding everything and carrying all before it, but like an insidious infiltration of a thousand and one turbulent rivulets which, having slowly drenched the earth, suddenly submerge it completely.

—José Saramago,
Blindness

PROLOGUE

AT LAST THROUGH the broken windows, the pulse of helicopter rotors and airboat propellers set the summer morning air throbbing with the promise of rescue. Floodwaters unleashed by Hurricane Katrina had marooned hundreds of people at the hospital, where they had now spent four days. Doctors and nurses milled in the foul-smelling second-floor lobby. Since the storm, they had barely slept, surviving on catnaps, bottled water, and rumors. Before them lay a dozen or so mostly elderly patients on soiled, sweat-soaked stretchers.

In preparation for evacuation, these men and women had been lifted by their hospital sheets, carried down flights of stairs from their rooms, and placed in a corner near an ATM and a planter with wilting greenery. Now staff and volunteers—mostly children and spouses of medical workers who had sought shelter at the hospital—hunched over the infirm, dispensing sips of water and fanning the miasma with bits of cardboard.