Dallas faced an unprecedented public health scare in the fall of 2014 when a Liberian national was diagnosed with the Ebola virus. KERA is exploring lessons learned – and taking a deeper look at what happened last year – in a new series called Surviving Ebola.
Explore the KERA digital project here. There’s a timeline of Ebola-related events, voices of those most affected by the virus, and much more.
Today, we’ll look at the hospital hardest hit from the Ebola scare – the hospital that treated Thomas Eric Duncan. For the month of October 2014, revenue at Texas Health Presbyterian in Dallas declined more than $12 million. In November, revenue was down $8 million.
People didn’t want to go near the “Ebola” hospital.
Dr. Alexandra Dresel is a surgeon with a private practice at the Presbyterian complex. Even though her office, a warm sixth floor suite, isn’t inside the actual hospital, Dresel found herself trying to calm patients down, trying to talk them off the ledge. They still canceled.
“The practice basically came to a screeching halt,” Dresel said.
Read the rest of the story here.
Photo credit: Jim Tuttle/The Dallas Morning News
