[StBernard] Attorney General takes Memorial Medical Center records

[Westley Annis]

DALLAS - Tenet Healthcare Corp. issued a statement in connection with a
search on Oct. 1 by representatives of the Louisiana Attorney General's
Office of the campus of Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans. Included in
Memorial's campus is a 317-bed hospital that has been closed since Sept. 2
because of damage from Hurricane Katrina 

The company said Attorney General's Office personnel removed particularly
materials from the independently owned long-term acute facility managed and
operated under separate license by LifeCare Holdings Inc. The Attorney
General's office conducted its search in connection with a search warrant
issued by an Orleans Parish state judge. 

"We have been informed by representatives of Louisiana attorney general's
office that this was one of several searches the attorney general intends to
make of hospitals and nursing homes where deaths occurred during and after
Hurricane Katrina. We do not know specifically what the attorney general may
be looking into at Memorial Medical Center or the separately owned and
operated LifeCare facility within the hospital campus," the company said in
a prepared releaese. 

About 2,000 patients, physicians, employees and family members were
evacuated from Memorial following Hurricane Katrina after the levees failed
and surrounded the hospital campus with water from Lake Pontchartrain. "For
four days after the levee failures, the hospital was without law enforcement
security, power, proper sanitation and air-conditioning. The hospital's
administration team and Tenet put together an evacuation force using
privately hired helicopters, boats and busses," the hospital's statement
said. 

"Thirty four patients on the Memorial campus did not survive the
post-hurricane ordeal and died before evacuation. The company previously
announced that it believes 24 of these were patients in a separately owned
and operated long-term acute care hospital on the Memorial campus under the
care and supervision of LifeCare Holdings and its staff. . In addition, we
believe that as many as 11 patients on the Memorial campus had died before
Hurricane Katrina, but their bodies could not be removed by the coroner or
private funeral homes because of the approaching storm. Those bodies were
removed were removed with the others on Sept. 11." 

The company said it is cooperating with the state's investigation.