Says researcher Thomas Ricketts, PhD, "We don't know what this is going to mean to health care. We've never had to deal with something like this before." Ricketts adds that some doctors may retire or resettle elsewhere, and recreating lost medical records is going to be tough.
Ricketts is a professor of health policy and administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the deputy director for policy analysis at UNC's Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research.
According to WebMD
Ricketts explains, "The nearly 6,000 [doctors] is the approximate number of physicians doing primarily patient care in the 10 counties and parishes in Louisiana and Mississippi that have been directly affected by Katrina flooding. Over two-thirds -- 4,486 -- of those were in the three central New Orleans parishes that were evacuated."
Ricketts' report notes that many additional doctors were affected, although not uprooted, by Hurricane Katrina.
Ricketts counts more than 16,400 active patient-care physicians in all Gulf Coast areas designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) after Hurricane Katrina. More than 2,700 other doctors in those areas were in residency training - making the grand total of doctors in the region affected by Hurricane Katrina more than 19,000.
After Katrina, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas took specific steps to make doctors available, including letting volunteer doctors help treat patients and Louisiana's governor issuing changes to the state's malpractice liability laws as part of the public health emergency.
Most health records in community health centers within New Orleans' poorer neighborhoods were destroyed.
As a result, doctors have been requesting a move to store health records electronically.
