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American Morning

Katrina Six Months Later: Medical Care

Aired February 27, 2006 - 09:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. I'm Miles O'Brien.
Slidell, Louisiana, is where we come to you this morning.

Last night, I became an honorary member of a Krewe. I'm in Krewe now kind of. Bacchus, it is. Check out this "Times Picayune" local newspaper here. They called it Super Krewe Sunday, because Endymion and Bacchus, two of the big crews here, went back to back. Endymion, which Dan Aykroyd is the king had delayed by day because of rain. My Krewe, the Bacchus Krewe, sort of my crew, was led by Michael Keaton. I was a few floats behind him, Soledad.

And -- but it was unprecedented. Everybody I was talking to said they cannot recall a time when two of these so called Super Krewes, we're talking 30 floats worth of Krewe, had gone back-to-back. So they had in excess of 60 floats. I don't know when they finished. It was long past our bedtime, that's for sure -- Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I got to tell you, ran into some of the folks who were at the party, the post-party literally this morning, so they finished late, I can tell you that. We got the same "Times Picayune," and while you have the same Super Krewe, Sunday obviously right in the middle, I guess it's a sign of the times when the story to the left if "pickings slim for debris haulers." Obviously debris not moving, lots of issues in some parishes about FEMA dollars on that, and then housing program worries. Some in the East.

Another big issue, where are going to put this issue where are you going to put all these people who are displaced? And it kind of is the story of why we're here, I think, Miles. You know, Mardi Gras is such a huge issue, a sign for lots of, a sign for lots of people that the city is coming back, slowly maybe But then on either side, you've got housing, you've got debris, you've all those other issues that really define how quickly not only New Orleans, but the region recovers. We've got much more to talk about this morning.

We're going to go inside and take a look at the medical facilities here as well. That's another big question.

(NEWSBREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

S. O'BRIEN: We have been talking a lot about medical care, because of course since Hurricane Katrina hit, that has been a huge issue. Convention Center, lots of it cleaned up. Most of it, or a big portion of it, open. The bulk of it will be opening by the summer. In the back, around the back, is a hospital essentially. Dr. Peter Deblieux is the associate medical director of the emergency medical services right here at the Convention Center, which is sort of a long way of saying a hospital that's been set up to help people, but it's not a trauma center.

DR. PETER DEBLIEUX, CHARITY HOSPITAL: It's not a trauma center. What it is an emergency department, free-standing emergency department. And we have been here since November. And since November, we've seen greater and greater numbers of patients and sicker and sicker patients.

S. O'BRIEN: Really.

DEBLIEUX: In fact, last month we saw 4,700 patients, which is about half of the pre-Katrina numbers that we've seen at Charity and University Hospitals.

S. O'BRIEN: Because you of course were at Charity Hospital, an institution that is 270 years old, and some of the reports we got there were just brutal. I mean, they were horrifying.

Before we talk about Charity, let's talk about this emergency medical set-up. What do you have?

DEBLIEUX: Better to say what we don't have.

S. O'BRIEN: OK.

DEBLIEUX: We don't have capabilities for handling major trauma. We don't have capabilities for handling pregnant patients, acute heart attacks or strokes. What we...

S. O'BRIEN: That's a lot that...

DEBLIEUX: That's quite a bit. But we're still seeing 4,700 patients with other complaints, people with lacerations, bumps, bruises, abdominal pain, headaches, pneumonia.

S. O'BRIEN: Why are the people getting sicker. I mean, a good reason could be more people are moving in, more people are tackling the fixing of their homes, ergo more people are going to be sicker.

DEBLIEUX: Well, you got to understand, the numbers are coming back to the metropolitan area. And what we don't have in the metropolitan area are six metropolitan-area hospitals.

S. O'BRIEN: What do you have? Two.

DEBLIEUX: Well, we have 14 metropolitan-area hospitals within the city itself. There's Torro (ph). There's Tulane hospital, and then there's Children's Hospital, within the city. We're still minus six other city hospitals, and then we have a blanket of approximately 11 hospitals surrounding us.

S. O'BRIEN: So minus the six hospital, can you operate -- I mean, if the number of people continues to grow, people move back to the city, like everybody is hoping they will, can you operate minus six hospital?

DEBLIEUX: Not well. I will tell you that in the metropolitan area hospital, we're at capacity of 50 percent hospital beds. And we're providing emergency medicine services, and those numbers, as I said before, are continuing to escalate. Both with the numbers of patients being seen and the severity of the illness.

Last month we admitted 120 patients from this facility to area hospitals. We admitted 35 to ourselves as a one-day stay observation unit, just to offer emergency medicine services.

S. O'BRIEN: Has Mardi Gras added to your numbers? I mean, what kind of -- have you seen injuries? I would have -- we've seen a bunch of the drunk people, just in front of my hotel. Is that basically what you're seeing here?

DEBLIEUX: When we talk about increasing in numbers, we anticipate roughly to see about 30 percent increases in numbers pre- Katrina. That's what we saw for Mardi Gras. With six hospitals down in the city, we were preparing for a lot more patients than we've seen , again, once again, for surge capacity. And so what have we seen? Mostly intoxicated individuals...

S. O'BRIEN: Easy to treat.

DEBLIEUX: Mostly very easy to treat, but they require time and attention. And then, altercations. People who get altered with medicines. or alcohol.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, we saw some of those, too, yes.

Can I do a tour, you guys? Do we have the ability to walk and talk a little bit?

DEBLIEUX: Absolutely.

S. O'BRIEN: Point out for me -- I mean, you got a dental clinic.

DEBLIEUX: We have a dental clinic that's operative here. We have two different care areas. One's major emergency care and one is urgent care or fast track care.

S. O'BRIEN: What's the difference?

DEBLIEUX: The difference is severity of illness. Urgency care is mostly, you know, I've got, you know, a splinter in my finger. I've got a cold today.

S. O'BRIEN: Basic emergency room.

DEBLIEUX: Right. And then, emergency department care are the people who have abdominal pain, severe headaches, falls, that kind of thing.

S. O'BRIEN: Tell me a little bit about how many people are working here...

DEBLIEUX: Sure.

S. O'BRIEN: ... and what your hours are. I mean, I know you don't close and say, oops, sorry, the hospital is not open now, we need a break.

DEBLIEUX: It's open 24/7. It has been since November. And we took over from the military here, who we operated...

S. O'BRIEN: Right, right. We did a story on them working right out of here.

DEBLIEUX: ... here at the cash (ph). So we're able to deliver care, as I said, throughout the day. We're having over 200 employees that functioned at the Medical Center of Louisiana in the emergency department and the support services of the hospital here. The same nurses, the same respiratory therapists, hospital police, facilities management people, are delivering the care here for our patients.

S. O'BRIEN: How is Charity Hospital, your hospital, run?

DEBLIEUX: That hospital remains very broken. It was injured before Katrina.

S. O'BRIEN: Is it going to come back?

DEBLIEUX: It -- from our information, it will never come back as a hospital. Which is very, very sad for us.

S. O'BRIEN: I bet it is. A 270-year-old institution, that's got to be heartbreaking.

DEBLIEUX: It is tremendous. And there, you know, provided level one trauma center. Seventy percent of the physicians who function within this state trained within the walls of that hospital. And so the contributions that that hospital and the two medical schools, LSU and Tulane, have made not just to the city, not just to the state, not just to the region, is enormous.

S. O'BRIEN: It's about everywhere.

DEBLIEUX: To be without that is a tremendous loss.

S. O'BRIEN: Where do you -- do you -- when I was here with the military, they lived here. They showed me the barracks in the back. You live here, too?

DEBLIEUX: No, we're fortunate enough not to live here.

S. O'BRIEN: Good! I'm glad to see that. They didn't look that comfortable.

DEBLIEUX: We found housing for our residents, for our medical students and for our faculty and employees, in and around the metropolitan area. So we're fortunate for that. S. O'BRIEN: So do you feel, when you look at tents set up to help people that are in middle of New Orleans in a convention center that has a notorious name -- but that's changing, I think it's fair to say -- are you feeling hopeful?

DEBLIEUX: Well, we're part of that change. As you say, you know, the dubious connotations of the convention center and what it meant and people being left out, we've gone a long way towards changing the sense of what the convention center is to the community.

We think that's changing, but I will tell you that we really believe that it's somehow inappropriate at six months to be delivering care to patients in tents. That by this time, we should have hard walls in an area that's not going to flood.

S. O'BRIEN: Because you've got to move, right? I mean, they are going to open this convention center fully.

DEBLIEUX: This -- we need to be out of this space so that they can use this space to get on about the business of New Orleans. And the convention center needs to be repaired, and we need to be housed somewhere else.

And once again, delivering care in tents, you probably wouldn't be seeing this if this were Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York, There would be such a public outcry in the community saying how inappropriate it is to deliver care within tents. And because our political voice is so small here in the deep South and in New Orleans and people think it's all overblown...

S. O'BRIEN: You're in tents.

DEBLIEUX: They think it's somehow appropriate. And we don't. And we think our patients deserve far better than this.

S. O'BRIEN: Anybody deserves far better than this.

Peter Deblieux, it was nice to talk to you.

DEBLIEUX: Oh, my pleasure.

S. O'BRIEN: Thank you so much for your time. Best of luck. We certainly appreciate it.

DEBLIEUX: Thank you very much.

S. O'BRIEN: All right. Let's send it back to you guys.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We need to bring you some information on a story just into CNN out of California, out of Los Angeles. Let's go to the -- actually, we have a map here. Three suspicious packages have been found at a Metrolink station in Los Angeles. The station has now been closed. I wish I could be more specific, but I cannot. But we do know that Metrolink station is closed down, so commuters will have a problem, obviously.

Don't have any idea what's in that suspicious -- I'm sorry, what is it? El Monte, California, train station. That's where it is. And of course, as you might imagine,emergency crews are on the scene as I'm sure bomb sniffing dogs and the bomb squad. And when we get more information on this, of course, we'll pass it along to you.

Let's talk business now, though. How is the week starting in the stock market? Andy is here to tell us that.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" COLUMNIST: We'll see, Carol. Let's hope those are just some briefcases someone left on the train station.

Right now, stocks are trading up this morning. Up 45 points, those Dow Jones Industrials are. The big story this morning is oil. It is down under $63 a barrel. Coming back down after going up in the wake of that attack on that Saudi oil terminal. So that's some good stuff there.

One thing I want to correct. We said earlier -- I said earlier, to be specific, that Antoine's Restaurant in New Orleans was not open. It is open. And in fact, I encourage you to go down there and buy some food, since I might have hurt their business a little bit this morning, right?

COSTELLO: Exactly.

SERWER: OK? If they're open for breakfast. Maybe, who knows. We'll find out.

Now, want to talk a little bit about Steve Jobs. One of the most successful businessman on the planet, Carol. And, of course, iTunes has helped bring Apple back, revolutionize the movie business. Sold Pixar to Disney for billions of dollars, even fought to beat cancer.

But he is fighting a battle that he is not winning right now, with the local housing board in his hometown of Woodside, California. Here's the story. He has a mansion there called the Jackling House. And it is a monstrosity; 17,000 square feet, 30 rooms. He's owned it for 21 years. He wants to sell this baby. He hasn't lived there for six years. He wants to build a smaller home. They think it's a historic landmark, because it's a Spanish Colonial Revival style home.

COSTELLO: So why doesn't the state buy it, turn it into a museum?

SERWER: He wanted to give it away, but it would cost $6 million to move. He wants to keep the land. It's just one of those things that happens to rich people, right?

COSTELLO: I know nothing about that. Good luck, Steve.

Let's head back to New Orleans and Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: All right. Thanks guys. Ahead this morning, my interview with Harry Connick Jr. He's going to tell us what he's doing for this region that he loves so much. That's just ahead.

A short break. We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Harry Connick grew up in the Bayou. He's not here for Mardi Gras. That's because he's on Broadway. He's starring in "The Pajama Game." We sat down, though, and talked about his success on Broadway, and also what he's doing for his people right here in New Orleans.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN (voice-over): In the days after Hurricane Katrina, jazz musician Harry Connick Jr. came back to a hometown he didn't even recognize.

HARRY CONNICK JR., ENTERTAINER: Unbelievable. It's like it's end of the world now.

S. O'BRIEN: He's helped raise money for victims, but feels it's still not enough. Especially for the musicians who he calls the soul of New Orleans.

CONNICK: Keep in mind, these are guys that I played with since I was five years old. These are heroes to me. These are my Michael Jordans, my Muhammad Alis, coming up to me saying, Harry, what do we do?

S. O'BRIEN: Connick, along with another popular New Orleans jazz musician, Branford Marsalis, have been making plans along with Habitat for Humanity to build a musician's village, hundreds of homes for musicians with nowhere else to live.

CONNICK: If they don't come back, you know, this is a tradition that's been going on for a long time. Be passed -- that's how I learned how to play, going and sitting in with these guys when I was a little boy. They don't talk; they just play. If nobody is around to do that, it's going to be a bad scene. So we have to get the people back.

S. O'BRIEN (on camera): Sort of no alternative.

CONNICK: Not to me.

S. O'BRIEN: Failure is not an option.

CONNICK: No, it really isn't.

And it's a very delicate sort of balance, cultural balance in New Orleans. And if you remove the musical equation, it's going to die.

S. O'BRIEN (voice-over): Now, he's giving Broadway audiences a touch of New Orleans jazz each night in the hit musical comedy "The Pajama Game."

(on camera): It struck me watching it last night how the music so fits the style of music you're famous for.

CONNICK: Well, it does in a sense. I love singing melodies and I like singing lyrics that you can play around with.

S. O'BRIEN (voice-over): The style certainly won over his audiences. He sold more than 20 million albums, won several Grammys and has scores of sold out concerts.

One event, though, that Connick will miss is this year's Mardi Gras, but he says he feels strongly it's an event and tradition that must go on.

CONNICK: You have to move on. You have to -- yes, you're bitter. Yes, you feel like you've been failed on some level, by some level of your government, but I say absolutely have Mardi Gras, and it's probably very painful for some people, and it must sound like I'm speaking on some pedestal, because I don't, you know, have my primary residence there. But I think you've got to have it and I think you got to start some time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: We'll be back for that, of course. Yes, I'll be interested to see how many more of these houses...

S. O'BRIEN: We want to show you, if you need to donate money and you want more information, and you know what they need the money, here's where you want to go www.habitat-nola.org. Please check it out, Habitat for Humanity of course building those homes for musicians.

We've got a short break. We're back in a just a moment. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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