Nearly four months after Hurricane Ike slammed into the Southeast Texas coastline, one of the area’s important medical facilities is now prepared to house patients once again — though not for the volumes of indigent patients coming from Jefferson County and the surrounding areas.

The UTMB medical branch has been a main hub for Jefferson County’s indigent patients needing care in the past. Since Ike shut down normal operations, the county has been left struggling with how to best provide medical care for these patients.

Last fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30, 2008, the county spent $2.8 million for indigent health care. Of that, about 1.2 million, or 43 percent, was spent at UTMB in Galveston.

The amount funds a variety of medical expenditures, including those incurred for hospital stays, emergency room visits and clinical treatments such as chemotherapy.

Those receiving indigent medical care must meet low income guidelines, and not have access to other health insurance, Swain said.

Though 200 beds at the University of Texas Medical Branch’s John Sealy Hospital were made available Monday, the expanded facilities did little to alleviate Jefferson County concerns for its indigent patients.

The charity hospital, known for taking and treating indigent patients, is also not ready to begin accepting indigent patients at its pre-Ike levels.

“We will be taking indigent patients as they come in but that’s one of those issues, because of the limited number of beds, that we’re still working on. We’re just not able to take in indigent patients at the volumes we did pre-Ike right now.”

Even so, in Galveston, where Hurricane Ike destroyed much of the city, UTMB recovery efforts are moving forward. Almost 160 patients have come in seeking care from the hospital’s many services.

“We’re happy,” John Koloen, senior media relations specialist said Wednesday during a telephone interview. “It means we’re open for business and we can treat people. We’re able to handle individuals seeking in-patient and out-patient care, and we’re continuing to run our birthing center. It’s a very good thing for the island, psychologically, as well as for health care standards.”

Other services becoming available Monday are the hospital’s pediatrics unit, acute care for the elderly, the surgical unit, transplant services, critical care, cardiac catheterization, hemodialysis, the burn-intensive care unit, the general research center, Texas transplant center and the pharmacy.

Despite these services, the hospital’s emergency room services are still operating on a minimum scale.

“We’re still basically in the recovery mode,” Koloen said. “Even though we’ve opened up these aspects of the hospital, right now we aren’t prepared to handle an influx of patients in the ER. We’ll either treat and release, or, in many cases, treat and transfer them to another facility if we are not able to deal with what they have.”

Koloen said the hospital evaluates its ER capabilities on a weekly basis, however, those capabilities are still not up to where they were pre-Hurricane Ike.

“What we brought back are the things that we’re able to open up the quickest,” Koloen said.