Nurses' 280-mile commute helps a city still in need

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Think your commute is bad? Imagine driving 280 miles roundtrip to work.

That's what Mississippi resident Nonna Bullock does. For Bullock, working four days a week in New Orleans wasn't something she was required to do, it was a choice.

"The people of New Orleans needed me," she said simply.

Bullock is among a handful of nurses who make personal sacrifices to work at Tulane Medical Center in inner-city New Orleans. "I saw how difficult it was to keep up," she said. "[They] needed more nurses, more hospital beds and more doctors down here. I was up for the challenge."

With six major hospitals shutting down after Hurricane Katrina, other institutions, including Tulane, have been left to pick up the overflow of patients. Other hospitals, like East Jefferson General, saw a steep reduction in staff. More than 100 of their nurses left after Katrina hit the city and have not returned.

Dr. James Moises, Tulane's emergency department director, experiences the strain firsthand. "Every time I come to work, it's a challenge. Not a challenge in trying to make the patient better, but a challenge in terms of logistics. The system is so stretched, we have to look outside for nursing staff and physicians."

For the last 15 months, Bullock has left her husband and children in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, four days a week to work the overnight shift at the hospital. However, she does have some reminders of home. She recruited her sister Sharon Walters and best friend, Cheryl Tucker, who are also seasoned nurses, to make the journey with her. They share a hotel room and work the same 12-hour shift, 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., at Tulane.

"We don't have many nights that we get a break," Bullock explained. "It's hard to breathe sometimes because your patient load is so intense."

Locals feel the shortage as well. Fifty percent of residents in the New Orleans area reported problems receiving medical care, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey. Watch Dr. Sanjay Gupta report on New Orleans' continuing health-care problems »

A common complaint is long emergency room wait times. CNN spoke to a 71-year-old man in a hospital waiting room who said he had been there for more than 14 hours. Hospital officials say the wait was closer to 10 hours.

"When I walk into the emergency department at any time, there are probably at least 10 to 15 patients waiting to be seen," Moises said. He added that while they try to treat patients as quickly as possible, they are constantly juggling beds to make room.

More patients, fewer hospitals -- it is a challenge that local emergency medical services workers see daily. "Since we've lost so many hospitals in the area, we don't have a lot of choices of where to bring patients to. The hospitals are overloaded," paramedic Davis Renois said. "The worst [thing] that ever happened was I waited five hours for a bed with a patient with a stroke."

Health-care executives from five major local hospitals blame the current health-care crisis on lack of funding. Since Katrina, the cost of utilities has risen 32 percent, and insurance is up 35 percent. Some hospitals have had to boost recruitment packages by 25 percent to keep nurses and doctors from leaving.

However, Dr. Mark Peters, CEO of East Jefferson General Hospital, says despite the spike in costs, federal funding has stayed the same. He says the explosion in costs, "almost guarantees for every Medicare patient being admitted into our hospitals, we'll lose money."

Before the storm, the five hospitals profited around $12 million annually; in 2007, they lost over $135 million collectively, Peters told CNN, confirming an estimate he gave in congressional testimony last fall. "We've had such a dramatic upswing in expenses, but revenues have basically stayed flat. So the math just doesn't work," he said.

The executives are urging Congress to provide financial assistance. Without it, they fear they'll have longer ER wait times and will have to shut down specialties, such as mental health programs. "This community cannot afford reduction in services," Peters said. "But when you look at the rebuilding of our community, I think sometimes health care gets forgotten about."

Luckily, for New Orleans residents and visitors, nurses such as Nonna Bullock are traveling from afar to provide high-quality care.

For Bullock, the busy shifts and long commute are all worth it. "I've had a lot of patients thank me for coming from Mississippi," she said. "They thank me for simply being here ... and it feels good." E-mail to a friend

Danielle Dellorto is an associate producer with CNN Medical News.