Dialysis during a disaster: A first-person account.

While this, hopefully, was a once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe, there were two takeaways for local caregivers and the company as a whole. Patient education remains critical. We will continue to prepare for hurricane season, but as a direct result of Katrina, residents of New Orleans are more likely to evacuate the city if the government advises them to do so. We have developed better disaster-response coordination. As the result of Katrina, we realized that we needed a true disaster preparation and response team and so we created the DaVita Village Emergency Response Team (DaVERT), a multi-disciplinary group dedicated to provide a wide range of support during natural disasters and other emergencies, natural and manmade.