Hurricane not likely to blow more EMRs into doctor offices

Katrina has highlighted the advantages of having electronic medical records but observers don't expect that physician adoption of EMRs will rise.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Oct. 10, 2005.

After Hurricane Katrina flooded her office, Regina Benjamin, MD, a solo family physician in Bayou La Batre, Ala., attempted to save her patients' paper medical records by spreading them out in her backyard.

"They got soaked and we're trying to dry them out in the sun," said Dr. Benjamin, a former AMA trustee. "We're fortunate because we haven't had much rain, and we're out there turning them over hoping they will dry."

Since Katrina displaced more than a million people in the New Orleans area and destroyed or washed away most of their paper-based medical records stored in physician offices and hospitals, several high-profile federal officials, including Dept. of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, MD (R, Tenn.) have said the natural disaster underscored the need for electronic medical records and a national health network.

Had patient records been automated, clinicians would have been able to access them, and the medical response to Katrina survivors would have been improved, they said. Electronic records are now being used after the fact; on Sept. 22, for example, a private-public effort, including HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the AMA, launched a secure online service that will enable physicians and other authorized health professionals to access medication records of Katrina evacuees scattered all over the country.

While industry observers agree that electronic records would be beneficial in times of natural disaster, public health emergencies or even the destruction of a physician's individual office, they caution that EMRs aren't a silver bullet. They also say Katrina won't spur a surge of physician investment in and adoption of EMRs.