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SBD
Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 1022
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 Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 6:24 am Post subject: HOUSTON'S 'KATRINA CLINIC' |
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| Quote: | HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Hurricane Katrina
Sept. 18, 2005, 10:39PM
HOUSTON'S 'KATRINA CLINIC'
A safety net that held strong, breaking the fall of 15,000
By LEIGH HOPPER
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The 15-day effort at a glance:
• Size: 100,000 square feet
• Exam rooms: 70
• Patients seen: 15,000
• Tetanus shots given: 10,000
• Doctor and nurse volunteers: 2,700
• Cost: $4.1 million
Source: Harris County Hospital District officials
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Four days after levee breaches drowned hospitals and cut off medical care for thousands in New Orleans, a tidal wave of people in the midst of potentially fatal health crises began pouring into Houston.
Doctors and emergency medical technicians at Reliant Park jumped aboard arriving buses full of Katrina refugees, identifying the sickest. Diabetics without insulin, severely dehydrated children, renal patients without dialysis were rushed to a clinic created inside a livestock exhibition hall.
In the aftermath of Katrina, amid angry debate about the confused federal response to the disaster, the "Katrina Clinic" at Reliant Park, spearheaded by the Harris County Hospital District, stands out as an undisputed success story. For many of the patients it served, a day more without medical attention might have killed them.
"Let me say up front, this, as far as I know, has never been achieved at this level, in any playbook, or blueprint for disaster planning anywhere in the world, ever," said Baylor College of Medicine's Dr. Kenneth Mattox, the chief of staff at Ben Taub, Houston's largest charity hospital and home of a renowned trauma unit.
Officials said that when Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and Surgeon General Richard Carmona visited the 100,000-square-foot clinic, their "jaws dropped." Clinton asked for a blueprint of how it was done. The hospital district — the county's health care safety net for the poor — is doing an oral history project so details of the feat won't be lost.
All told, the clinic, which disbanded Thursday, saw more than 15,000 patients during 15 days — 2,000 on the first full day alone — gave out 10,000 tetanus shots and filled thousands of prescriptions. An outbreak of contagious diarrheal illness was detected and contained. About 900 people were transported to hospital emergency rooms. Estimated total cost: $4.1 million, to be covered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"Every disaster is different. We usually plan for a disaster involving explosions, trauma, wounds ... We recognized this was not that kind of disaster," Mattox said. "We didn't need a (mobile) surgical hospital, we needed a big pharmacy. We needed a laboratory. We did not need an operating table, we needed an exam table ... And that's what we put in place on Wednesday afternoon."
Organizers say the Katrina Clinic came together with almost balletic grace. Calls for supplies were answered with speed. An SOS for more volunteers resulted in so many doctors and nurses that a special credentialing and staffing station had to be created.
Plans for the clinic began taking shape at 6 a.m. Aug. 31, three days after the storm, as a convoy of 450 buses prepared to leave Houston for Louisiana and bring back evacuees, said George Masi, the hospital district's chief operating officer.
At 9 a.m. Masi met with Harris County Judge Robert Eckels and Mayor Bill White, who asked Masi and other leaders to prepare "a significant medical mission."
With 15 or 16 hours to get ready, Masi left the meeting and drove to Reliant Park, where he deemed the vast Reliant Arena a good spot for the clinic, not withstanding the horseshoe imprints in the concrete floor. Rods and curtains for sectioning off exhibition spaces were in storage, ready for use. The pieces, like giant Tinker Toys, were fashioned into rooms for patient registration, medical triage, exams and a pharmacy.
Tables came next, and dozens of computers. Copiers, telephones and chairs followed. Ten sinks for handwashing were installed in a row. Later, CVS pharmacy would bring in two mobile homes for the distribution of medicine. Siemens loaned X-ray machines. Abbott Laboratories diverted a mobile lab on an 18-wheeler that was headed to Oklahoma. Businesses donated medical supplies.
By midnight, the core of the clinic was ready.
As evacuees arrived, the clinic grew from 20 exam rooms to 40, and then to 70. The staff of the hospital district and Baylor College of Medicine worked 36 hours straight. By Sept. 2, the first Friday, doctors were feeling stretched thin. A call for more help went out. About 2,700 doctors and nurses volunteered.
At the behest of the mayor, a second clinic, staffed by physicians from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, opened at the George R. Brown Convention Center, and began seeing 500 to 700 patients a day, reaching a total of 9,000 last week.
Doctors saw patients with asthma, broken bones, chest pain, out-of-control diabetes and high blood pressure. One young man had a gunshot wound to his forearm. The most difficult encounters were with patients in withdrawal from narcotic addiction.
Fear of TB or a deadly diarrhea outbreak surfaced. On-site chest X-rays for adults with coughs quickly dispelled the tuberculosis worry, but on Day Four of the clinic, doctors said 90 children had some type of contagious gastrointestinal illness. Chances of typhoid or cholera epidemics seemed remote but not impossible.
The infection soon spread to several hundred people, forcing the quarantine of the clinic's own restrooms. Baylor identified the culprit: a treatable norovirus similar to one that causes widespread illness on cruise ships.
And so it went.
As the crisis phase passed, people too poor for easy access to medical care for less pressing problems in New Orleans sought it out in the Katrina Clinic. People who barely escaped New Orleans with their lives could now get attention for ingrown toenails.
"We had people who lost their glasses, and we had the ability to examine their eyes and ... (put) glasses on their heads in 20 minutes," Mattox said. "To get this population of people back into function, to get a job and get moving, we gave a lot of immunizations, we filled a lot of prescriptions."
Last week, as the clinic and megashelters wound down, health officials began publicizing the locations of free and low-cost clinics throughout the county, to ensure continuity of care for evacuees and to head off overcrowding in Houston's frequently maxed-out emergency rooms. The Red Cross will operate a first aid center for evacuees who remain at Reliant Park.
Masi said evacuees with health insurance who decide to stay in Houston will be easily absorbed by the medical center.
The uninsured, who could number in the thousands, are another story.
"The question is, if they are the medically needy, who are self pay or uninsured, where will they go for their health care and what portion of that will fall to the Harris County Hospital District?" Masi said. "It's still problematic. We don't know." |
SBD |
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dusty
Admiral
Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 1264
Location: East Texas
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| Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:41 am Post subject: |
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What a great testament to Houston area doctors and nurses, not to mention the mayor and other civil servants that facilitated this effort.
What a beautiful synergy comes from having people that actually know what they are doing, doing the planning and execution.
Maybe some of these folks should be elevated to positions of disaster planning in Washington?
Dusty
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Left and Wrong are the opposite of Right! |
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AMOS
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 30 Jul 2004
Posts: 558
Location: IOWA
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| Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:36 pm Post subject: Try New Orleans. |
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| Washington? Try New Orleans first, so they can teach those clowns how it should be done. Blanko, Blinko, Bunko. |
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carpro
Admin
Joined: 10 May 2004
Posts: 1176
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:59 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio really stepped up.
Let's all hope they don't eventually regret it.
_________________
"If he believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service." |
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Armybrat/Armymom
Commander
Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 335
Location: Central Texas
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| Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:29 pm Post subject: |
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| carpro wrote: | Yes, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio really stepped up.
Let's all hope they don't eventually regret it. |
Don't forget Austin. |
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homesteader
PO3
Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 294
Location: wisconsin
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| Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio........aren't they all in Texas? Didn't Texas recently have a two term Governor named Bush? Maybe Hillary should go to him and ask for the blueprint she was looking for. He would direct her back to Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonia and hundreds of other local entities that did not look to the likes of Hillary to figure out how to do things. |
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wwIIvetsdaughter
Captain
Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 513
Location: McAllen, Texas
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 4:39 am Post subject: |
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Add them to the list deserving Kudos:
1) National Guard
2) Coast Guard
3) US Military (multiple branches/units)
4) State Wildlife Departments
5) NOLA Fire Department and many other FDs from across the USA
6) Border Patrol
7) Police Dept. from multiple jurisdictions
 ASPCA and various private groups rescuing abandoned pets
9) Various Airlines that flew refugees out of Armstrong airport
I do believe the rescue of NOLA residents and the search and rescue in Mississippi/Alabama was the largest, most complicated rescue effort in US history by far  |
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homesteader
PO3
Joined: 17 Sep 2004
Posts: 294
Location: wisconsin
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 2:22 pm Post subject: |
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| At the head of any list should be the churches and church members of America. I'm glad that jackass (don't even know his name) asked "Where's the Christianity?" He highlighted how overwhelming the church response has been. |
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dusty
Admiral
Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 1264
Location: East Texas
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| Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 3:11 pm Post subject: |
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Thought this was appropraite to post here.
Lessons from Katrina from a preachers perspective.
| Quote: | Katrina Can Teach Us ~
by Max Lucado
Who would have thought we would ever hear this phrase spoken on a radio news report in America: "Today, about 25,000 refugees were moved from the Superdome in New Orleans to the Astrodome in Houston."
For days, we've watched the tragedy continue to unfold in Mississippi and Louisiana and, if you are like me, you've wrestled with feelings of shock and disbelief. feelings that, over the last five years, have become all too familiar. We were barely into the new millennium when we saw towers falling in New York City and planes crashing into the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania farmland. We saw bombs over Baghdad and witnessed the ancient land of Abraham become a war zone for his ancestors. You'd think we had seen enough, but then came the tsunami--a roaring wave that sucked life and innocence out to sea.
And now the fruits of Katrina. A city sitting in twenty feet of water. Citizens hacking their way onto roofs and helicopters hovering over neighborhoods. Optimistic rescuers, opportunistic looters, grateful people, resentful people--we have seen it all.
And many have seen it up close. Katrina came to San Antonio in the form of 12,500 evacuees. Many of you are meeting them, feeding them, writing checks, and manning shifts. And you, as much as any, have reason to wonder. What is going on here? 9/11, Iraq, tsunami, Katrina. And I didn't mention nor intend to minimize Hurricanes Dennis and Ivan and Emily.
Jesus criticized the leaders of his day for focusing on the weather and ignoring the signals: "You find it easy enough to forecast the weather--why can't you read the signs of the times?" Matthew 16:2-3 (MSG).
What are we to learn from all of this? Is God sending us a message? I think so. And, I think we'd be wise to pay attention. There are some spiritual lessons that I think God would want us to learn through this tragedy. The first lesson we see is.
I. The Nature of Possessions: Temporary
As you've listened to evacuees and survivors, have you noticed their words? No one laments a lost plasma television or submerged SUV. No one runs through the streets yelling, "My cordless drill is missing" or "My golf clubs have washed away." If they mourn, it is for people lost. If they rejoice, it is for people found.
Could Jesus be reminding us that people matter more than possessions? In a land where we have more malls than high schools, more debt than credit, more clothes to wear than we can wear, could Christ be saying:
"Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" (Luke 12:15)?
We see an entire riverboat casino washed up three blocks and placed on top of a house in a neighborhood. You see demolished $40,000 cars that will never be driven again, hidden in debris. And in the background of our minds we hear the quiet echoes of Jesus saying, "What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?" (Matthew 16:26).
Raging hurricanes and broken levees have a way of prying our fingers off the stuff we love. What was once most precious now means little; what we once ignored is now of eternal significance.
A friend and I attended a worship service at Antioch Baptist Church last Sunday night. Several African American Church leaders had organized an assembly to pray for the evacuees that have ended up in San Antonio. Many of them sat on the front rows. dressed in all the clothing they owned: T-shirts, jeans. Their faces were weary from the week. But when the music started and the worship began, they came to their feet and sang with tears in their eyes.
They were rich. Are you that rich? Were all your possessions washed away, could you still worship? Would you still worship? If not, you are holding things too tightly: "Tell those rich in this world's wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage--to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they'll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life" (1 Timothy 6:17-19 MSG).
Through Katrina, Christ tells us: stuff doesn't matter; people do. Understand the nature of possessions. Be equally clear on:
II. The Nature of People: Sinners and Saints
We see the most incredible servants and stories of selflessness and sacrifice. We see people of the projects rescuing their neighbors, we see civil servants risking their lives for people they've never seen. My wife Denalyn and I toured a shelter supervised by one of our neighbors here in San Antonio. We met a family of some twenty cousins and siblings.
One six-year-old girl told Denalyn about the helicopter man who plucked her off a third story porch and lifted her to safety.
That child will never know who that man is. He'll never seek any applause. He saved her life. All in a day's work. We saw humanity at its best. And we saw humanity at its worst.
Looting. Fighting. We heard stories of rapes and robberies. Someone said, "The heavens declare the glory of God but the streets declare the sinfulness of man." The video footage in New Orleans has confirmed the truthfulness of that quote. Can you imagine not being able to sleep in the Superdome for fear that someone might try to rape your daughter if she went to the restroom in the middle of the night?
We are people of both dignity and depravity. The hurricane blew back more than roofs; it blew the mask off the nature of mankind. The main problem in the world is not Mother Nature, but human nature. Strip away the police barricades, blow down the fences, and the real self is revealed. We are barbaric to the core.
We were born with a me-first mentality. You don't have to teach your kids to argue. They don't have to be trained to demand their way. You don't have to show them how to stomp their feet and pout, it is their nature. indeed it is all of our nature to do so. "All of us have strayed like sheep. We have left God's paths to follow our own" (Isaiah 53:6).
God's chosen word for our fallen condition has three letters- s-I-n. Sin celebrates the letter in the middle. "I". Left to our own devices, we lead a godless, out of control life of ".doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it" (Ephesians 2:3 MSG).
You don't have to go to New Orleans to see the chaos. Because of sin, the husband ignores his wife, grown men seduce the young. The young proposition the old. When you do what you want and I do what I want, humanity and civility implodes.
And when the Katrinas of life blown in, our true nature is revealed and our deepest need is unveiled: a need deeper than food, more permanent than firm levees. We need, not a new system, but a new nature. We need to be changed from the inside out. Which takes us to the third message of Katrina:
III. The Nature of God's Grace: Inside Out
Much discussion revolves around the future of New Orleans. Will the city be restored? Repaired? How long will it take? Who will pay for it? One thing is for certain: someone has to clean her up.
No one is suggesting otherwise. Everyone knows, someone has to go in a clean up the mess. That is what God offers to do with us. He comes into sin-flooded lives and washes away the old. Paul reflected on his conversion and he wrote: "He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5). Our sins stand no chance against the fire hoses of God's grace.
But he does more than cleanse us; he rebuilds us. In the form of his Holy Spirit, God moves in and starts a complete renovation project. "God can do anything, you know--far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us." (Ephesians 3:20 MSG).
And what we can only dream of doing with New Orleans, God has done with soul after soul, and he will do so with you, if you let him.
The most disturbing stories from the last week are of those who refused to be rescued. Those who spent their final hours trapped in attics and rooms regretting the choice they'd made. They could have been saved. They could have gotten out. but they chose to stay. Many paid a permanent price.
You don't have to pay that price. What rescuers did for people on the Gulf Coast, God will do for you. He has entered your world. He has dropped a rope into your sin-swamped life. He will rescue, you simply need to do what that little girl did, let him lift you out.
I mentioned my visit to Antioch Baptist Church last Sunday night. A local minister, Pastor L. A. Williams gave a message on this one verse: "But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." (Gen. 6:.
The minister helped us see all the things Noah could not find because of the flood. He could not find his neighborhood. He could not find his house. He could not find the comforts of home or the people down the street--there was much he could not find. But what he could find made all the difference. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah found grace in the eyes of God. If you have everything and no grace, you have nothing. If you have nothing but grace, you have everything.
Have you found grace? If not, I urge you to do what that little girl told us she did. When the rescuer appeared on her porch, she grabbed him, closed her eyes, and held on. That's all you need to do. And if you never have, and would like to, I urge you to reach for the hand of your rescuer, Jesus Christ.
Your Redeemer lives, too. This hurricane was his tool to get your attention. Trust in Him while you still can.
Max Lucado, © 2005
With more than 28 million books in print, Max Lucado has touched millions with his signature storytelling writing style. Awards and accolades follow Max with each book he writes. Max is the first author to win the Gold Medallion Christian Book of the Year three times -- 1999 for Just Like Jesus, 1997 for In the Grip of Grace and 1995 for When God Whispers Your Name.
Max serves as the pulpit minister of the Oak Hills Church of Christ in San Antonio, Texas. But he says his greatest accomplishment is finding a one-in-a-million wife in Denalyn and having three unbelievable daughters: Jenna, Andrea, and Sara.
You can visit his web site at: http://www.maxlucado.com |
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Left and Wrong are the opposite of Right! |
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