Anita Manning, USA Today, December 4, 2005

Many hospitals in the New Orleans area are short-staffed and struggling to care for a growing population of patients who are returning to their homes three months after fleeing Hurricane Katrina.

"The disaster is still really going on, in terms of health care," says Nancy Davis, chief nursing officer at Ochsner Clinic Foundation in Jefferson Parish. "We have to take all the patients who come in because so few hospitals are open, yet we don't have staff. All the hospitals that are open are in desperate need for staff." ... Gulf