Top-notch community health care emerges in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina’s rubble

Big Chief Theodore Emile “Bo” Dollis, a musician and one of New Orleans’ legendary Mardi Gras Indians, spent the last years of his life struggling with the effects of a stroke and failing kidneys that forced him onto dialysis for nearly a decade. But unlike most people without health insurance, he got top-notch care at the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic until his death this past January at age 71.

“I don’t know if my husband would have survived as long as he did without the Musicians’ Clinic,” says his widow, Laurita “Big Queen Rita” Dollis. “That’s because he got everything he needed – X-rays, blood work, referrals to specialists – without any stress and didn’t have to wait hours in the emergency room just to see a doctor.”

The clinic on a leafy street in the city’s Garden District is part of one of the great success stories to emerge from the rubble of post-Katrina New Orlean…

USA TODAY, August 29, 2015