The entryways to Tulane Medical Center may be sandbagged because of Hurricane Isaac, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t accepting patients. Emergency room staff and a skeleton crew medical team have been braving the weather every day, treating almost as many patients as they would under normal conditions.

The city has offered to transport people with special medical needs to state shelters, but many proud citizens don’t want to leave their homes, meaning the hospital is seeing patients who have experienced failures in their home medical equipment due to power outages or other issues.

Though hospital staff, as always, is more than willing to bite the bullet and brave the storm, Tulane emergency room medical director, Dr. Prateek Adhikari, told the Times-Picayune there were multiple reasons for citizens with chronic medical issues to follow authorities’ advice and accept the governments offer to relocate them as storms approach. In addition to the risks involved in staying home when power and water services will likely be disrupted, and the dangers of being forced to brave the storm if help becomes necessary, Adhukari explained, “People need to be aware that hospitals are not running on all eight cylinders.”

He added that the medical center’s intensive care unit was already filled. The problem was compounded by a case of good old fashion bad luck, as the hospital would have preferred to release more patients as the storm approached, but happened to have a higher than normal number of patients who were severely ill and simply couldn’t be released in good conscience.

Despite these obstacles, the hospital’s diligent preparation for the storm has made the difference. The pharmacy stocked up in the days before the storm, in anticipation of the increased difficulty, if not outright impossibility, of delivering additional supplies during a severe storm.

The hospital also received assistance from its majority owner, Healthcare Corporation of America, which has provided its medical centers in the region with special weather updates, extra supplies, and emergency evacuation contracts with various types of aircraft.

Though Hurricane Katrina remains a haunting memory in the minds of a nation, its clear that many lessons have been learned from the region-shattering event in terms of preparedness for severe storm events. The river may rise, but the people will too.

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The new medical center will be located in a biomedical district currently developing in downtown New Orleans. VA officials said that the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care Center will not only outclass its predecessors in terms of health care capabilities, but also in its physical preparedness for sustaining a Katrina-type event. The Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care Center, the local VA health care provider, designed the facility to be flexible and able to adapt to changes in hospital organization and functions in the future.

Local company, Clark-McCarthy Healthcare Partners is heading up the project through an integrated design and construct agreement. The new building will better fit the VA’s missions, which include education, research and national preparedness for incidents like Katrina, in addition to the primary task of caring for veterans themselves.

In order to prepare for the structural challenge of a flooding even like the one Katrina caused, the SLVHCS designed the new medical center “upside down.” Services typically housed on the ground floor or basement, such as the kitchen and access points for utilities, have been moved to the fourth level. All essential services will be at least 20 feet above ground.

The second order of business was to make the facility capable of operating independently of the city’s infrastructure. The new medical center has a seven-day strategy to self-sustain with up to 1,000 occupants. Though patient rooms are designed to be single occupancy, they are equipped with all the services necessary to house two people per room. The facility’s energy plant stores 320,000 gallons of fuel, enough for a full week, and can collect and store more than a million gallons of rainwater on-site in case city water is contaminated or unavailable. There is also a 6,000-square-foot warehouse on-site to store emergency supplies. The windows were designed to survive at least Category 3 hurricane winds. The medical center is accessible by hospital or boat and travel from building to building can be accomplished entirely indoors. The hospital will also feature a fully securable perimeter in case of “civil unrest or national emergency.”

Hopefully none of these measures will ever have to be used and the facility will simply be known for serving more than 70,000 veterans throughout the region. “Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast and left the New Orleans health care system in ruins,” commented SLVHCS Director Julie Catellier. “What we’re building today ensures care for veterans in the future.”

Next door to the VA project, Louisiana State University (LSU) is designing a University Medical Center, with East Coast firm, Skanska USA Building, and New Orleans native, MAPP Construction LLC, earning the preconstruction assignment. Seattle-based NBBJ will serve as architect.

The new center will consist of a 560,000-square-foot hospital with 424 beds; a 747,000-square-foot diagnostic and treatment center; and a 546,000-square-foot, 1,350-car parking structure. Along with the VA and other groups, LSU is contributing to what will soon be a robust medical district for students and patients.

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