The New Katrina Flood: Hospital Liability

James Nielsen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ISLAND Pendleton Memorial Methodist Hospital was one of many health centers inundated by flood waters.

By SHERI FINK

Published: December 31, 2009

His conclusion is now evidence in a lawsuit against Methodist that could have significant implications for hospitals nationwide.

“The first question is, do we have generators placed to accommodate an emergency flood with 15 feet of water?” wrote Cameron B. Barr, then an executive vice president. “The answer to that question is no.” One of the two main generators was located on a roof, he said, but another “would be nonfunctional at about two feet of flood water around the generator.”

Not only would it have to be relocated, he said, but the power plant and an underground tunnel connecting the plant to the hospital would have to be protected.

As a “back of the envelope” estimate, Mr. Barr wrote, “to protect the Hospital, East Tower, power plant building and to relocate the emergency generators and fuel supply would probably be a $7.5 million project.”

But the money was never spent, the power went out, and the hospital’s life-support machines stopped working. Now, the family of Althea LaCoste, a 73-year-old patient who died in what her family’s lawyers allege was sweltering heat after nurses spent hours pumping air into her lungs by hand in the pitch dark, is raising a potentially far-reaching legal question: How prepared do hospitals have to be for the worst possible circumstances?

More than 100 deaths occurred in New Orleans-area hospitals and nursing homes after Hurricane Katrina when emergency backup power systems failed and patients languished for days awaiting transport. About 200 lawsuits have been filed in Louisiana alleging that these institutions are liable for the deaths and for the suffering of other patients who survived because corporate failure to plan adequately for flooding and implement evacuation constituted negligence or medical malpractice.

The LaCoste trial is set to begin on Monday. “This could be a new theory of liability against health care institutions — lack of emergency preparedness,” said Kristin McMahon, an attorney and chief claims officer for IronHealth, a company that insures hospitals. “The courts across the country will be looking at it.”

More . . .

"