Officials say the hospital’s outpatient clinics, which draw 1.4 million patients each year from across the nation and overseas, will not reopen until at least Friday.ĭisruptive as such changes have been, doctors, health-care administrators, and the leaders of the regional network say Houston’s vaunted web of hospitals has generally come through the storm in far better condition than during the last massive rains to deliver a direct hit. MD Anderson Cancer Center, one of the nation’s premier cancer hospitals and a major presence in the Texas Medical Center, shut down its massive outpatient operation on Sunday to focus its diminished resources on patients already in the hospital with the most time-sensitive need for treatment.ĭoctors, nurses and other staff members there spent the next few days calling patients and medical facilities nationwide to reschedule appointments and arrange for people whose cancers require immediate treatment to receive it at hospitals closer to home. Tuesday, in driving rains, about two dozen ambulances carried 75 patients to another Memorial Hermann hospital a dozen miles away. It was a very tough decision,” Haralson said. “We felt in our guts this was the right thing to do. With the river forecast to crest Thursday at 59 feet - just an inch shy of a nearby levee’s capacity - officials turned to their disaster plan and called for evacuation.
“I mean it just was unimaginable.”Īt Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital just southwest of Houston, chief executive Greg Haralson said administrators watched as the Brazos River less than a mile away quickly rose. I mean, we’ve run out of wheelchairs,” said Darrell Pile, chief executive of the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council, who oversees preparations for and management of medical crises for the 25-county region. The storm “challenged every plan we’ve written, every resource, every piece of inventory. (Dalton Bennett,Patrick Martin/The Washington Post) Volunteer Toby Rannigan came from Dallas to help Houston residents recover from historic floods. Many of the other facilities canceled elective surgeries and any other appointments that could wait. In the end, only three vehicles made their destinations of hospitals up to 150 miles away the two others had to turn back.īen Taub was among some 20 of about 110 hospitals in Houston and nearby counties that removed a portion or all of their patients - 1,500 people, including those in nursing homes and other facilities - as floods from Harvey continued Wednesday to ravage Southeast Texas.
And then, when only five ambulances could reach the bay outside the emergency department, it was significantly reduced again. The kitchen was knocked out, as well as the pharmacy and the area where supplies such as linens and needles are stored.īut with knee- to waist-high water immediately outside, and flooding across the city, the hospital-wide evacuation became a new plan to move fewer than 80 of the sickest patients. As the remnants of Hurricane Harvey continued to unleash epic rains, a foot of water was rising in the hospital’s basement from a burst pipe and wet seeping in from the city’s inundated streets. The county hospital had initially planned to transfer all of its 350 patients. The first ambulances finally arrived at Ben Taub Hospital, in the heart of Houston’s vast Texas Medical Center, to remove five patients clinging to life on ventilators.