Healthcare IT Tested By Oklahoma Tornadoes
By John Oncea, Editor
A little more than a month after the Boston Marathon bombing put healthcare IT under the microscope, the tornadoes that devastated Moore, OK are testing the industry again.
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Following the Boston Marathon bombing much was written about the strengths and weaknesses of healthcare IT as it is currently structured, including this feature by Health IT Outcomes. While some victims are still struggling, the consensus was the industry responded well to the unwanted challenge.
Some even called the response heroic, including Lorren Pettit, MS, MBA, vice president of market research at HIMSS Analytics. Writing for HIMSS, Pettit says, “The healthcare informaticist rushes to ease the pain of others by making sense of the chaos around us. While the impact of the healthcare informaticist may not make headlines like the law officials did in Boston, the impact in identifying, isolating and eradicating dangers is significant and is to be celebrated.”
The role that informaticists will play in relation to the tornadoes that devastated Moore, OK, as well as how other healthcare technology will be utilized, can be compared and contrasted to what happened in Boston, but the protection of health records due to the destruction of a hospital can’t.
When Moore Medical Center was hit by the 200-mile-per-hour winds the most serious injury suffered by those huddled inside the hospital was a possible broken leg. The building itself, however, was destroyed, along with the patient’s medical records.
Modern Healthcare reports this should not disrupt patient care because, according to Joanna Walkingstick, director of member services for the Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO) SMRTnet, “Many of the essential elements of patient records for more than 2 million people have been backed up by the RHIO serving Oklahoma City and stored in a Cerner Corp. data warehouse ‘buried in the side of a large, manufactured hill in Kansas City.’”
The security of Moore Medical Center’s EHR records can be compared directly to what happened May 17, 2011, when a massive tornado ravaged Joplin, MO, destroying St. John’s Regional Medical Center, now known as Mercy, in the process. When that tornado hit, old X-rays and paper files were found as far as 70 miles away.
According to Mercy, “It didn’t matter, the medical records that counted were safely housed in a data center more than 200 miles away,” that had opened a few months earlier as part of a $550 million investment made by Mercy in electronic records.
The impact of Mercy’s use of EHRs was felt by many, but none more than Lee Humphrey who had survived the storm by hiding under a stairwell at his apartment complex not far from St. John’s. According to Mercy, “The pacemaker implanted weeks earlier recorded how his heart stopped amid the terror of the tornado, and how the device kept him alive – for 2 minutes, 41 seconds.”
However, Humphrey “needed medications that doctors had tweaked just days before the tornado but the drugs and their records had blown away.” Humphrey’s wife, Diane, said things turned desperate the morning after the tornado, when Lee suddenly appeared weak and ashen. “Lee had turned totally gray,” Diane said. “We had to get his medications, but nobody knew for sure what he needed.”
An ambulance transported them to Mercy Hospital Springfield where his health care history was waiting for him, having “beaten him there as the electronic blips of a digital network.” According to Diane, “Those records saved his life, I have no doubt.”
EHRs aren’t the only technology that will contribute to people and aid in Moore’s recovery – mobile health will as well. According to The Wall Street Journal, Direct Relief has “committed an initial $100,000 and its entire $30 million stockpile of available medical inventories to support medical relief and recovery efforts in communities affected by the storms.” In addition, Direct Relief is deploying a mobile medical unit – purchased after the Joplin, MO, tornado – to help in Oklahoma.
Direct Relief notes on its site “Through use of software from technology partner Palantir, Direct Relief is able to view its health center partners under severe storm watch. This information allows Direct Relief to identify partners most in need, letting them know in advance that Direct Relief’s medical inventory is available.”