Is Dr. Horace Baltz a fictional version of a real doctor?
Yes, Dr. Horace Baltz is based on the real doctor with the same name who worked as an internal medicine specialist at Memorial during Hurricane Katrina and the flood that followed. When Baltz started working there, it was called “Southern Baptist Hospital.” At the time of the hurricane, he had been a doctor at Memorial/Baptist for a long time and was a former president of the hospital’s medical staff. Baltz has also been an important part of making a hospital ethics group. Doctors, nurses, and other staff at Memorial looked to Baltz as a leader. While they were waiting to leave the building, Baltz said that he thought everyone would make it out alive, which got a round of applause.
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In the end, a boat was used to get Baltz out of the hospital building. The book that the show is based on, “Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital” by Sheri Fink, says that when he found the dead bodies in Memorial and heard that his colleagues had been accused of euthanasia, he was upset. “He [Baltz] worried about the damaged reputation of the hospital where he had spent his whole career, the good reputation that so many of his colleagues had worked hard and long to build and keep up at Baptist and Memorial,” Fink wrote in the source text. The accusations also made him remember something clear.
According to the source text, Baltz heard three doctors talking on September 1, 2005, before the evacuation was over. One of the doctors said, “Our hardest job will be to convince the nurses that what we ask them to do is okay.” What Baltz heard could have been about letting people die early. Baltz didn’t want to keep practicing at Memorial when it reopened under new ownership. Fink’s book says that Baltz wrote his resignation letter when he realized that “his values and ethics no longer matched those of his colleagues.”
According to the source text, Baltz also wrote a letter to the investigators for the Louisiana attorney general to encourage them to keep looking into the possible mercy killings at the hospital. When Dr. Anna Pou was accused of killing patients, it was hard for Baltz to understand what was going on. “Pou’s alleged actions, he thought, destroyed the trust in the medical profession that is a cornerstone of society,” Fink wrote in her book.
Where is Dr. Horace Baltz Now?
After leaving Memorial, Dr. Horace Baltz went to work at Touro Infirmary, a hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana, that does not make money. Baltz is said to have stopped practicing medicine after 58 years in August 2017. He was also involved with the Mater Dolorosa Church and the St. Stephens Church. Baltz died on December 6, 2017, because an infection made it hard for him to breathe. His wife, two nieces, and a nephew all lived on after him. Baltz had worked at the Southern Baptist Hospital/Memorial Medicine Center for about forty-four years.