EFL. Emphasis added.
In the first 16 hours, doctors treated about 100 people: nasty head wounds, car crash victims, cuts from storm debris, dehydration.
With such demand, it is hard to imagine that the doctors weren't allowed to set up shop in Louisiana, their original destination. They were stymied by red tape there.
"Mississippi stepped up and said if they don't want you, we'll take you," Dr. Thomas Blackwell, medical director of the hospital and an emergency doctor at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C., said Monday. He said the delay in getting deployed was a dispute with Louisiana over what they'd be allowed to do.
Now the futuristic $1.5 million emergency response hospital is getting its first real tryout since the Department of Homeland Security established it. The 113-bed hospital travels in a convoy that includes two 53-foot trailers. Equipment includes ultrasound, digital radiology, satellite Internet, and a full pharmacy, enabling doctors to do most types of surgery.
|