Katrina wreaks havoc on records ... lost records challenge doctors.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: UP FRONT: News, Trends & Analysis

Hurricane Katrina victims lost everything, including their homes, insurance, and medical records.

Without medical records, doctors were hard pressed to treat people who needed help but whose conditions and medications were unknown. The U.S. government provided help by way of making medical information on hurricane evacuees available online to doctors--the first time private records from various pharmacies and other healthcare providers have been compiled into centralized databases, according to The Washington Post. The data contain records from 150 ZIP codes in areas hit by Katrina. Doctors in eight shelters for evacuees could use the Internet to search prescription drug records on more than 800,000 people from the storm-racked region.

Officials added computerized records from Medicaid in Mississippi and Louisiana, Department of Veterans Affairs health facilities, laboratories, and benefits managers.

The records are the first step toward rebuilding medical files on more than 1 million people disconnected from their regular doctors and pharmacies. Officials fear that many medical records in the region, especially those that were not computerized, were lost to the storm and its aftermath.

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The system was organized in 10 days through daily conference calls involving as many as 60 state and federal officials, emergency medical providers, insurance, pharmacy and medical-software company representatives, and government lawyers.

Privacy advocates fear electronic health records because they say they could be used for ill purposes by hackers, companies, or the government. Federal regulations do not require patient consent for records to be shared for medical purposes. Companies or organizations that have such data...