It’s been about one year since Hurricane Sandy made landfall on the New Jersey coastline and forced many hospitals into crisis mode. Some providers are still recovering. The impact of that natural disaster continues to reverberate, particularly the significance of electronic health records in the face of a natural disaster or an emergency. The New York eHealth Collaborative is working out a plan to give first responders access to limited patient information from the state’s health information network or SHIN-NY. The idea is this access would position police and firefighters to provide up-to-date information in response to queries from loved ones in an emergency.
David Whitlinger, the executive director of the New York eHealth Collaborative, told MedCity News that it wants EMS personnel to be able to see patients’ last known location so they can better inform loved ones. A trial of this system is set for November. The collaborative is continuing to work out details such as which first responders would have access to the system and under what circumstances?
It’s one of the recommendations that’s emerged from a review of the response to Hurricane Sandy.
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About 12 million patient records are contained in the SHIN-NY.
It’s seen as a logical way to disseminate important information. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, people often had to rely on news media and social media to find out where family and friends were evacuated.
The frenetic pace of responding to the mountain of calls that tend to accompany emergencies requires that certain protocols be established to ensure that patient information remains secure. The move to give EMS access to patient records, as limited as the information may be, is not without its critics. They liken it to Big Brother; see it as invasive and a potential security risk.
Some health information exchanges are already working to provide access to patient electronic health records. Michigan’s statewide HIE and a regional HIE in Houston, for example, are working with software provider ESO Solutions to build a portal so emergency medical service staff can provide relevant info on patient EHRs.
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The images of patients being evacuated from New York hospitals with their medical records pinned to their blankets is still vivid for Whitlinger and he hopes hospitals won’t need to repeat that. It’s one reason why he’s keen to see more hospitals connect their EHR systems with the state SHIN-NY.
Another change he’s observed since the storm hit: more health facilities have shifted their data centers to locations outside the region to make them less vulnerable.
The state is in the process of assembling a patient portal through which patients in the system will be able to grant relatives access to their health records. That will be another way for relatives to see if they have been moved.
