Read Online Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Sheri Fink
Tags: General, Social Science, True Crime, Murder, Disease & Health Issues, Disasters & Disaster Relief
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four years younger than Pou and had a PhD in addition to his medical degree. The two weren’t close.The program seemed headed in a different direction, with more emphasis on research. Pou’s passion was for taking care of patients. She decided to leave, weighing offers from as far away as San Diego.
Over the years, at various national meetings of her specialty, Pou had developed a friendly relationship with the head of otolaryngology at Louisiana State University, Dr. Daniel W. Nuss, whose private practice was located at Memorial Medical Center. Nuss, too, treated head and neck cancers and had built a program focused on tumors and reconstruction—Pou’s type of work. His program also served patients at the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans, better known as Charity Hospital, including prisoners and many people who lacked health insurance. They had both trained in Pittsburgh and grown up in New Orleans; one of Nuss’s brothers had briefly dated one of Pou’s sisters. Nuss had asked Pou several times if she would ever consider moving back to New Orleans. Now Pou was ready to say yes.
“Dr. Pou, we regard this as an exciting opportunity, and it is indeed with pleasure that we invite you to join our faculty,” Nuss and the dean of LSU’s medical school wrote in her official employment offer. Pou inked her acceptance in April 2004.
While the state university employed Pou and provided her with liability insurance, Memorial Medical Center made an important contribution to her move, advancing the university more than $350,000 to pay her first year’s salary and expenses against her future earnings as a surgeon. In exchange, Pou would join Memorial’s medical staff and also see patients in its emergency room when she was on call, without additional pay. It was a no-lose situation for profit-conscious Tenet Healthcare, Memorial’s owner. The university had to pay back the guarantee payments, and with university physicians on staff, Memorial qualified as a teaching hospital and was eligible for additional funds from Medicare.
On September 1, 2004, Pou took up her position as an associate professor at LSU in New Orleans. She began seeing patients in October.The move was meant to be a permanent one. In November,Panepinto purchased a $349,000 house near the hospital, taking out a loan for 80 percent of its price. In early 2005, the couple sold their home in Galveston.
Pou was given a tour of Memorial and introduced to the operating-room nurses. “Dr. Poo?” one asked. “No, Pou,” she said, pronouncing it her family’s way, “Poe,” as if it rhymed with “toe.” “Sorry,” the nurse said. She sized up Pou, a tiny lady rolling a tiny piece of Samsonite luggage behind her. This was the much-heralded new surgeon? “You gotta see this!” the nurse whispered to a colleague. Judging her on looks alone, the nurses didn’t believe that the diminutive Pou was capable of performing tedious, draining, backbreaking all-day operations. She didn’t appear to have that kind of stamina.
Pou would have to prove herself. She did not win over everybody she met.
DR. HORACE BALTZ WAS, at seventy-one when Katrina approached, one of the hospital’s longest-serving doctors and a former president of its medical staff. He had treated patients at Memorial and Baptist for more than four decades and still performed basic blood tests by hand rather than sending them to a lab like just about every other doctor did. In his office, he kept a large black-and-white photo of a nurse in a white cap holding a cup of water to the lips of an elderly man lying on a cot. He and the nurse had worked together in 1965 caring for displaced residents after Hurricane Betsy.
Baltz was the son of a motion-picture projectionist, the youngest of five children, and the first in his family to attend college. He could remember, from his days as a high school delivery boy for the neighborhood drugstore, filling prescriptions for Dr. Frederick Pou,
Over the years, at various national meetings of her specialty, Pou had developed a friendly relationship with the head of otolaryngology at Louisiana State University, Dr. Daniel W. Nuss, whose private practice was located at Memorial Medical Center. Nuss, too, treated head and neck cancers and had built a program focused on tumors and reconstruction—Pou’s type of work. His program also served patients at the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans, better known as Charity Hospital, including prisoners and many people who lacked health insurance. They had both trained in Pittsburgh and grown up in New Orleans; one of Nuss’s brothers had briefly dated one of Pou’s sisters. Nuss had asked Pou several times if she would ever consider moving back to New Orleans. Now Pou was ready to say yes.
“Dr. Pou, we regard this as an exciting opportunity, and it is indeed with pleasure that we invite you to join our faculty,” Nuss and the dean of LSU’s medical school wrote in her official employment offer. Pou inked her acceptance in April 2004.
While the state university employed Pou and provided her with liability insurance, Memorial Medical Center made an important contribution to her move, advancing the university more than $350,000 to pay her first year’s salary and expenses against her future earnings as a surgeon. In exchange, Pou would join Memorial’s medical staff and also see patients in its emergency room when she was on call, without additional pay. It was a no-lose situation for profit-conscious Tenet Healthcare, Memorial’s owner. The university had to pay back the guarantee payments, and with university physicians on staff, Memorial qualified as a teaching hospital and was eligible for additional funds from Medicare.
On September 1, 2004, Pou took up her position as an associate professor at LSU in New Orleans. She began seeing patients in October.The move was meant to be a permanent one. In November,Panepinto purchased a $349,000 house near the hospital, taking out a loan for 80 percent of its price. In early 2005, the couple sold their home in Galveston.
Pou was given a tour of Memorial and introduced to the operating-room nurses. “Dr. Poo?” one asked. “No, Pou,” she said, pronouncing it her family’s way, “Poe,” as if it rhymed with “toe.” “Sorry,” the nurse said. She sized up Pou, a tiny lady rolling a tiny piece of Samsonite luggage behind her. This was the much-heralded new surgeon? “You gotta see this!” the nurse whispered to a colleague. Judging her on looks alone, the nurses didn’t believe that the diminutive Pou was capable of performing tedious, draining, backbreaking all-day operations. She didn’t appear to have that kind of stamina.
Pou would have to prove herself. She did not win over everybody she met.
DR. HORACE BALTZ WAS, at seventy-one when Katrina approached, one of the hospital’s longest-serving doctors and a former president of its medical staff. He had treated patients at Memorial and Baptist for more than four decades and still performed basic blood tests by hand rather than sending them to a lab like just about every other doctor did. In his office, he kept a large black-and-white photo of a nurse in a white cap holding a cup of water to the lips of an elderly man lying on a cot. He and the nurse had worked together in 1965 caring for displaced residents after Hurricane Betsy.
Baltz was the son of a motion-picture projectionist, the youngest of five children, and the first in his family to attend college. He could remember, from his days as a high school delivery boy for the neighborhood drugstore, filling prescriptions for Dr. Frederick Pou,
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