Database helps get meds to evacuees

The AMA is offering use of its Physician Masterfile to authorize doctors' access to confidential medication records.

By David Glendinning, AMNews staff. Oct. 10, 2005.

Washington -- In an unprecedented move, the federal government recently approved the launch of a Web site allowing access to prescription drug records for hundreds of thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

The site (www.katrinahealth.org) allows all licensed pharmacists and physicians treating evacuees to find out what medications their patients have been taking; information about allergies and potential drug interactions is also included.

The Markle Foundation, one of the organizations that helped launch the effort, estimated that nearly 40% of those who fled the disaster were taking prescription drugs before the hurricane struck and would likely need to continue or enhance their treatments.

The new tool will be helpful for ensuring the continuing health of evacuees, many of whom will have trouble recounting their complete drug regimens for doctors whom they have never met before, said David Brailer, MD, PhD, the national health information technology coordinator.

"This showed us an urgent need where health information can play a role -- where among all the other aspects of both the disaster and the recovery, health information has a place that can mean a real difference in people's lives," he said. The storm "manifested itself in people coming to shelters without prescriptions, or physicians and clinicians there not knowing what medications they were taking [after] the destruction of medical records throughout the affected areas from the hurricane."