HJNO Nov/Dec 2021

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  NOV / DEC 2021 15 communications with powering govern- ment buildings and mobile cell towers. Areas that could use improvement include having access to water tanks/trucks immediately post storm and improved com- munications infrastructure and planning. How did COVID-19 considerations affect both the needs and the response? Hart COVID certainly changed our onsite emergency personnel staffing. Our cen- sus was also high across facilities, espe- cially in ICUs, making patient transfers and advanced evacuations very difficult. In other circumstances, we may have moved critical care patients to other facilities outside of Ida’s path, but there wasn’t capacity. When heavily impacted facilities in the Bayou area needed to transfer patients, it was a chal- lenge since so many hospitals were full, but our size and relationships with hospi- tals across the region proved to be a great benefit — we moved patients to Lafayette, North Louisiana and New Orleans. Elder Sheltering of employees in the hos- pitals and the public in state-run shelters required additional space and COVID pre- cautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Luckily, we did not see a spike in COVID-19 post Ida. Torcson I have to reiterate what I said about crowd control. We weren’t able to invite our family and community into close proximity. That’s hard. And like all healthcare systems, we too, were already stretched to the limit to provide adequate staffing, and the storm made it harder. Lorio COVID-19 adjusted our outpatient therapy protocols, changing them to a Sub Q model for Regeneron (Monoclonal Anti- body) therapy that would be administered in the emergency walk-in clinic and a drive-up capacity. We were also able to deploy COVID testing with our mobile medical units. We know that the pandemic has contributed to a decline in public health because of delayed routine medical care and screenings. Did that contribute to the post- Ida public health crisis? Hart In advance of Ida, we were still very much in the fourth and most significant surge of COVID-19. It hit Louisiana harder and earlier than many parts of the country, and we were very lucky that cases, while still very high, were starting to decline when the storm hit. For example, across our facilities, we had nearly 1,100 COVID patients onAug. 9. When the storm hit, we had just over 700 — trying to find a silver lining and put a dose of positivity on it. But we are still feeling the effects of the first wave of the virus — people put off care and may have skipped or delayed the appointments that not only manage their health issues but that can identify other conditions (like cancer) before they become life-and-death. So, in NewOrleans, we resumed outpatient and clinic visits and procedures just four days after the storm made landfall; we couldn’t afford to delay longer since the weeks prior led to thou- sands of surgical delays. We are trying to very thoughtfully pull forward all of those surgeries that are time sensitive to get those done and try to catch up on people’s care. The other thing that we worry about in general is the screening. The American Cancer Society and others have sounded the alarm that with people not getting their screenings during COVID, there’s going to be, over the next two years perhaps, a lit- tle spike in cancers that were diagnosed at later stages of disease, because people put off some of the screenings that they nor- mally would have done. Between COVID and Ida, being worried about your home and your belongings, the roof over your head, thinking about your screenings is not as high on the list of things to do. So, we’ve got to take care of people in their homes, and we’ve got to do a lot of things for our employees, because our employees are going through the same things. We need to get them fuel to get back and forth, supplies to keep going, hotel “Based on lessons learned in this storm, we are adjusting and improving our pre-storm process for our healthcare infrastructure. We have also developed processes to deploy outreach and clinical services post storm using a Mobile Walk-in Medical Clinic deployed to areas in the community where the storm hit the hardest.” –ANDREA LORIO, DO