14 September, 2005 19:01 GMT
As they move from triage care to federal shelters, to church shelters or private homes hurricane survivors are seeing different volunteer doctors who may prescribe different, even conflicting, regimens.
One oncologist evacuated New Orleans clutching a laptop computer with some records, another threw some paper charts in her truck on the way out. But for most of the 80 children with cancer in Dr. Joseph Mirro's evacuee clinic, their parents' memory of last treatments proved key to resuming therapy.
Hurricane Katrina destroyed or left inaccessible the medical records of untold numbers of people, focusing new attention on the need for computerized medicine -- health records that follow patients, even if their doctors' offices no longer exist.
"There may not have been an experience that demonstrates, for me or the country, more powerfully the need for electronic health records ... than Katrina,"
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said.
"I saw physicians treating patients who were obviously ill and who were without sufficient information to make diagnoses."
Conflicting Care
It's an ongoing problem, as hurricane survivors move from triage care like that provided at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, to federal shelters, to church shelters or private homes -- seeing different volunteer doctors in each place who may provide different, even conflicting, care.
What records of the temporary care they're able to carry to the next doctor they see varies widely.
One bright exception: Even though the New Orleans VA Medical Center flooded, electronic medical records for 50,000 patients of that hospital and surrounding veterans' outpatient clinics survived.
On Sept. 1, a Department of Veterans Affairs computer specialist was airlifted from New Orleans carrying backup tapes of all the records, which by the next night had been re-entered into computers in Houston.
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