Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Katrina Victims Bodies at Memorial Medical Center September 5, 2005 (photo-Tony Carnes: AP/Christianity Today)
New Orleans’ worst hospital nightmare after Hurricane Katrina will be relived in a courtroom beginning this week as the trial against Memorial Medical Center and its former parent company, Tenet Healthcare Corporation, commences. Jury selection is scheduled to begin this afternoon.
Forty-five patients died at Memorial in the days following the devastating storm due to horrific conditions inside the hospital, some of them injected with drugs to speed up their deaths. The class-action lawsuit alleges that a breakdown in the hospital’s backup electrical system and poor emergency planning helped cause personal injury and death. Accusations also will be leveled at Tenet, which allegedly failed to provide support to Memorial’s staff after the situation turned critical.
Things were so bad inside the hospital, where temperatures reached 100 degrees after the air conditioning system shut down, that some medical staff resorted to euthanasia to end the suffering of many patients.
“The doctors didn’t create that environment. The hospital created that environment,” Joseph Bruno, one of the lead lawyers for the class-action plaintiffs, told ProPublica.
Lawyers for Tenet and Memorial are expected to argue that the tragedy was a result of the storm, the city’s failed levees and the chaotic government response by state and federal officials.
Plaintiffs will counter with a report from 2004 that warned hospital administrators about the vulnerability of Memorial’s electrical system in the event of flooding. Officials declined to heed a recommendation to move key components of the system above the ground floor.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Trial to Open in Lawsuit Connected to Hospital Deaths After Katrina (by Sheri Fink, ProPublica)
The Deadly Choices at Memorial (by Sheri Fink, ProPublica)
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