Katrina -- patients left behind in hospitals?

Mayor Nagin's failure to follow the emergency operations plan again resulted in more deaths and unnecessary panic. The hospitals should have been the first sites evacuated when the voluntary evac order got published, and certainly should have been at the top of the list for the mandatory evacuation. The buses should have rolled to the hospitals before anywhere else, but even without the buses, the mayor's office should have contacted the hospitals and ordered them emptied by the Friday before landfall.