Hurricane Katrina Highlights Need for Backup Medical Records
The AP/Philadelphia Inquirer on Saturday looked at how flooding in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans meant that some "desperately ill patients had to rebuild their medical histories from scratch" after many paper records and some electronic records were lost. The hurricane showed that "even electronic records are vulnerable, forcing medical groups to consider shipping that data to warehouses far from danger or even handing over the job of running their networks to outside parties," according to the AP/Inquirer. Thomas Handler, research director for consulting firm Gartner, said, "People expect you not to have access to paper records, but they don't expect you not to have access to electronic records." Companies that provide those services say there has been increased interest in disaster-recovery systems and off-site data storage since Katrina. The AP/Inquirer reports that backup health records for 3,500 HIV-positive patients from the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans were stored on computers in Baton Rouge, La., and were available within a week after the hurricane. Michael Kaiser, associate chief medical officer for the Louisiana State University Health Care Services Division, said, "That's a good feeling to be able to give that response because so many people read or saw on TV about the destruction of paper records. They will call us looking for partial information, and they're surprised by how much we can provide" (Twiddy, AP/Philadelphia Inquirer, 11/12).
Related Broadcast Coverage
NPR's "Morning Edition" on Tuesday in the first part of a series on mental health in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina reported on an October CDC survey that found almost half of affected individuals who have returned to the New Orleans area require mental health services. The segment includes comments from Cheryl Bowers-Stephens, assistant secretary for the Louisiana Office of Mental Health, and mental health counselors in the area (Spiegel, "Morning Edition," NPR, 11/15).
The complete segment is available online in RealPlayer. The second part of the series, which is scheduled to air on Wednesday, will examine the challenges faced by emergency medical workers at home and at work.