CHICAGO -- About one fourth of the physicians who left the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina were still gone six months later, and some displaced physicians had no plans to return, according to a study in the inaugural issue of the AMA journal, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness.

Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. The storm and subsequent flooding in Louisiana and Mississippi were blamed for at least 1,808 deaths and over $100 billion in damage. More than 1.5 million people were evacuated. By autumn 2005, nearly 6,000 physicians had been displaced from the Gulf region, including 4,486 from three New Orleans parishes. Only three of nine hospitals in Orleans parish had reopened by February 2006, according to background information in the article.

Kusuma Madamala, PhD, MPH of the American Medical Association's Center for Public Health Preparedness and Disaster Response, and colleagues conducted a descriptive Internet-based survey during the spring of 2006 to investigate physician demographics and relocation patterns following Hurricane Katrina. Survey participants were selected from an AMA master file of all licensed physicians reporting addresses within Federal Emergency Management Agency-designated disaster zones in Louisiana and Mississippi before August 2005.
A total of 312 eligible responses were collected, yielding a 32 percent response rate from the physicians who were contacted. Among the disaster zone respondents, 85.6 percent lived in Louisiana and 14.4 percent lived in Mississippi before the hurricane.

By spring 2006, 75.6 percent (236) of the respondents had returned to their original homes, whereas 24.4 percent (76) reported a different place of residence, the authors report.

Nearly ten percent remained out of state, with the preponderance of this group indicating that they were either unlikely to or uncertain about returning their original practice, they continue.

At the time of the survey, 40.7 percent of physicians reported that the hospitals with which they were primarily associated were closed. Virtually all the physicians surveyed also reported some level of damage to their homes.

"As expected, physicians whose homes were significantly damaged or destroyed were far more likely to be displaced at the time of the survey," the authors write. "Approximately 24 percent of those still relocated six months after the disaster reported complete destruction of their homes, and nearly 40 percent of this same group reported personal losses greater than $50,000.

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