Baton Rouge General transfers some patients

• By STEVEN WARD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Sep 4, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Just before 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, a fleet of ambulances from all around the country pulled up to Baton Rouge General Medical Center Mid City to transfer 29 patients to other health facilities.

A lack of power and the comfort of long-term acute care patients were the reasons for the transfer, Terri McNorton, vice president of marketing and communications with Baton Rouge General Medical Center said Wednesday.

The lack of power meant no air conditioning but the hospital was still successfully functioning via generators Wednesday afternoon, McNorton said.

“The emergency room is still open and operating,” McNorton said.

Baton Rouge Medical Center Bluebonnet was hooked back up with power Tuesday night and has been fully operational since then, McNorton said.

Twenty-four long-term acute-care patients were transferred Wednesday — 18 to Promise of Louisiana in Shreveport and six to Promise’s Baton Rouge campus at Ochsner Hospital.

Three patients in the hospital’s burn unit were transferred to a hospital with a burn unit in Shreveport on Tuesday. 

Another patient from the Mid City hospital’s burn unit was transferred Wednesday to the same Shreveport hospital.

Four other critical-care patients from the hospital were transferred from Mid City to Baton Rouge Medical Center Bluebonnet location Wednesday.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency contracted the ambulances.

By the time Wednesday’s transfers were complete, 153 patients were left at the Mid-City hospital, McNorton said.

“We will continue to assess patients that need to be transferred for medical reasons, based on the current situation with power and electricity,” McNorton said.

Making the best of a situation he can’t control, Dr. Venkat Banda, head of hospitalized medicine at Baton Rouge General Medical Center, said he was satisfied with the staffing and operations of the hospital even though power had not been restored Wednesday.