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Physicians use mobile hospital to provide health care in Gulf Coast Disaster
North Carolina physicians expected to stay in Mississippi until the end of October.
Courtesy of Michael Bosse |
Teams of physicians are running a specially-equipped mobile hospital in a Mississippi Gulf Coast town to help ease dire health care shortages in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The storm’s aftermath is the vehicle’s first deployment, which is expected to continue until the end of October.
Michael Bosse, MD, of Charlotte, N.C, traveled to Waveland, Miss., in the mobile hospital Sept. 2 and spent nine days in the storm-ravaged town. North Carolina officials dispatched the vehicle, which arrived in Mississippi Sept. 3 and was operating late the following day.
M*A*S*H on wheels
“The facility is impressive,” Bosse said. “The time you set your parking brake to the time you can see patients is 45 minutes. You just pop the sides out, wheel in some equipment and you’re ready to go.”
Thomas Blackwell, an emergency room physician and Emergency Medical Services director in Charlotte, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials secured a $1.2 million grant to design and build the mobile hospital after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The mobile hospital has two trucks, the OR and a support vehicle. The main vehicle has hydraulics that expand both sides of the truck bed, providing a 1000-square-foot work area. It has 12 beds and two operating room beds. Four of the 12 beds are ICU-capable. The OR beds are for surgery or trauma resuscitation. A tent structure can extend from the trailer 40 feet on each side to house up to 100 patients or provide space for trauma, triage, minor care or storage, Bosse said.
The mobile facility has surgical trays for damage control, external fixation, debridement, vascular repair and hemorrhage control surgery, sterilization unit, digital X-ray machine, digital X-ray retrieval system, laboratory, EKGs, ultrasound units and a pharmacy.
The mobile hospital is the only major medical facility between Baton Rouge and Gulfport, Miss., Bosse said. Teams of physicians take turns staffing it. Waveland has about 43,000 patients, about 20,000 of whom had returned home. Physicians had treated more than 3500 patients as of Sept. 22, Bosse said.
Waveland has three types of patients: those needing basic care or medications, urgent care patients and acute emergency room patients, Bosse said. Patient volume is highest among those who need basic care, lowest in the acute ER group and moderate in the urgent care group, he said.
The mobile unit can be reconfigured depending on the services physicians need to perform, Bosse said.
“It’s a really interesting process,” he said. “By changing the composition of your staff you can change the emphasis of the facility in three days.”
Orthopedists also need to be versatile. For example, officials relied on orthopedists to help set up the mobile hospital site when the vehicle arrived in Waveland, Bosse said.
“Most orthopedic surgeons are good with their hands and with tools, so they can actively assist with the mechanics of a deployment,” Bosse said.
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