posted May 25, 2006 03:01 PM              

Thursday, May 25, 2006; Posted: 2:22 p.m. EDT (18:22 GMT)

Elvira LeBlanc's family claims negligence at New Orleans' Memorial Hospital led to her death.
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Mark and Sandy LeBlanc said they trusted Tenet Health System Memorial Medical Center to protect his mother, Elvira, when Katrina struck New Orleans. Now they are suing the hospital claiming the hospital's negligence led to her death.

"They told us they had plans," Sandy LeBlanc, Elvira's daughter-in-law said. "And supplies. They had extra stuff. We asked if we needed to be concerned about trying to evacuate her. They said that we did not need to evacuate her from the hospital. There was no need and that she would be fine. She would be OK."

According to her son, Elvira LeBlanc, 83, was in the seventh floor Lifecare Facility at Memorial for treatment of a urinary tract infection and adjustment of her medications. She suffered from Parkinson's disease but her son Mark said she was in stable condition when the hurricane hit New Orleans August 29. About a week later she was dead, despite her family's journey through Katrina's floodwaters to evacuate her themselves from the chaos of the cut-off hospital. The hospital said they could not comment on any patient's medical conditions because of privacy rules.

The LeBlancs had hired a Certified Nursing Assistant -- a CNA -- to stay with Mark's mother and gave her a cell phone so they could keep in touch. The couple, meanwhile, evacuated to northern Louisiana, but soon after Katrina hit they were alarmed by the CNA's concerns.

"She had fright in her voice," Sandy LeBlanc recalled. "And I asked her,' What are they telling y'all? Are they saying they are going to evacuate y'all or what?' She said, 'They're not telling us anything, but I can see out the window.' So I said, 'What do you see when you look out the window?' and she said, 'I see water coming up around.' "

Two days after Katrina hit, and the levees had broken the LeBlancs said they had no choice but to brave the floods to save their mother.

In an interview with CNN the couple describes the harrowing rescue and the heart-wrenching scene inside the hospital.

The LeBlancs grabbed supplies and made their way back to flooded New Orleans where hundreds of thousands of people were stranded, and without power. They borrowed a boat, and Mark LeBlanc said he was appalled by his mother's condition. He says he remembers her "laying in sweat and muck and yuck and everybody on the seventh floor chaotic because they didn't know what was going on."

He and his wife said Elvira LeBlanc was severely dehydrated and had no IV fluids. They grabbed her chart and ignored the doctors who said they could not take their mother.

"We just shoved her out the window, onto the airboat and said, 'We're going,' " Mark LeBlanc said.

They promised the staff they would return to get them and the other patients. After putting Elvira Leblanc in an ambulance to Baton Rouge, they returned to the hospital the next day.

"I told him when we come back tomorrow a lot of these people won't be here," Sandy LeBlanc said she told her husband. "They'll be dead. And when we got back Thursday, the CNAs came out, they were from LifeCare, and we saw, and I said 'What happened to the patients?' and they said they all died."

Elvira LeBlanc died four days after her son rescued her from Memorial Hospital. The family blames Tenet for her death, saying she never recovered from the severe dehydration.

The LeBlancs are among seven families suing Memorial Hospital, claiming the hospital failed to follow its own hurricane plan in caring for patients in the wake of the disaster. The Louisiana Attorney General is also continuing his investigation into whether some staff at Memorial Medical Center may have euthanized patients in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Tenet Healthcare, the parent company, said it is cooperating with the investigation.

Chris Bruno, a New Orleans attorney who represents the families who are suing, says the hospital is responsible for those that died.

"There's the flood evacuation policy in place for things to do and yet they did nothing," Bruno said. "It was pandemonium, and I think it was from the corporate level that this occurred. It wasn't from the doctors, the doctors were there trying to save lives. It was this corporation that failed these patients, these staff people and the family members that remained at that facility."

New Orleans attorney Kurt Blankenship is defending the hospital, which says it did nothing wrong. Blankenship says the staff performed heroically, had adequate supplies and followed its plan. He says "the evidence will show that the hospital did follow its plan under extraordinary circumstances."

But the levees broke, leaving the city flooded and the hospital stranded. "The plan contemplates access to the hospital would be possible," Blankenship said. "That is even if flood waters came in, flood waters would go down, ambulances could go in and out, and transportation would be available to get patients out."

The LeBlancs say they don't buy that because they managed to get through the floods to rescue their mother.