NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The two medical schools in New Orleans say there’s another sign of recovery from Hurricane Katrina — high interest in medical residencies at New Orleans hospitals.
Officials at both LSU Health Sciences Center and Tulane University School of Medicine say that 96 percent or more of their positions were filled with people who had asked to be there.
Thursday was “Match Day” — the day newly graduated doctors learn where they will work as residents. Medical students and institutions list their choices, and a computer matches them. Students who don’t get matched fill remaining openings in what’s called the Scramble.
Dr. Mark Kahn said Tulane had more than 200 openings, and all but three or four were filled in the Match. At LSU, about 96 percent of the openings — 113 out of 117 — were filled in the Match.
That’s about in line with the national figure of 95 percent.
But in 2006 — the first match after the storm — only 70 percent of LSU residencies in New Orleans were filled by students who had listed the school among their choices, said Charles Hilton, associate dean for academic affairs at the university’s New Orleans medical school.
Hilton said LSU offered 128 residencies in New Orleans and matched 111 of them — 86 percent — in 2005, five months before Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. In 2006, it offered 110 and matched 76.
This year, he said, it offered 117 and matched 113. For LSU, that’s the highest fill rate in nearly 20 years.
Kahn, senior associate dean for Admissions and Student Affairs at Tulane’s medical school, said its match rate also dipped in 2006. Reached by mobile phone after hours Thursday, he could not recall the exact numbers.
