Assisting Hurricane Evacuees in Houston and Louisiana

On Saturday, September 10, 2005, the California Emergency Medical Services Authority called. The US Surgeon General’s Office had requested that the state provide medical support in the Houston area to treat Hurricane Katrina evacuees. This population had critically depleted local medical resources and their ability to provide adequate care. By early Monday morning, an 11-member Kaiser Permanente (KP) medical team from Northern and Southern California was on their way to Houston. As part of KP’s Procurement and Supply organization, the Health Care Continuity Management Department was developed following the 2001 anthrax attacks, and has programwide responsibility for responding to and managing emergency and crisis situations. Unfortunately, most of the Houston and Louisiana logistical and medical mission objectives and requirements had not yet been clearly developed by our federal hosts, including travel arrangements, appropriate multilevel emergency credentialing and licensing, and team member replacement procedures if the mission continued. On Saturday, September 17th, I joined the Houston team to provide additional, frontline support and overall team leadership. Team one was treating hundreds of patients per day at various clinic locations in both the Louisiana and Houston areas. Team members saw patients in schools, churches, shopping centers, convention centers, and other nontraditional locations. On September 21st with Hurricane Rita approaching the US Department of Health and Human Services ordered an evacuation of all emergency workers. Two days after Rita made landfall, the US Surgeon General’s office requested additional medical support. Within 48 hours I led a new 24 member KP medical team back into the greater Houston area. Austere medical operations continued with our physicians, nurses, and mental health providers seeing hundreds of needy patients each day in incredibly spartan locations with improvised medical supplies and equipment. In addition to the medical team, Al Carver, Vice President, National Pharmacy Operations, provided an overnight shipment of critically needed vaccines (100 doses of Hepatitis A, 500 doses each of tetanus, hepatitis B and pneumoccocal vaccine) during Team two’s deployment. Team two remained in Houston until October 14th. Each person involved with this mission continues to share their personal experiences and the incredible stories of survival from the patients. Participation in the mission was life affirming and in many cases was life-changing. This experience affirmed individual decisions to enter the health care profession. Even though each evolving day of the crisis brought on new challenges every person associated with the mission indicated they would, without hesitation, volunteer again to go on a similar mission.