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April 23, 2007
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Katrina prompts disaster Rx plan
Nationwide database would store prescription details for evacuees
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS — A new Web site, refined from one rushed together after Hurricane Katrina scattered Mississippi and Louisiana residents nationwide, is ready to help doctors and pharmacists get patients' prescription histories almost instantly after a disaster.
It's called In Case of Emergency: Rx, or ICERx, after the acronym many agencies recommend people program into their cell phones to make their personal emergency contacts easy for rescue workers to find.
The site, www.icerx.org/, will be formally unveiled Tuesday during the National Association of Chain Drug Stores' annual meeting in Phoenix, said Rick Ratliff, chief operating officer of SureScripts.
The site's prototype, www.Katrinahealth.org, opened 3 1/2 weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, spreading evacuating residents nationwide.
Like people anywhere, many were on prescriptions, and most had expected their evacuations to last only a few days.
Insurance companies, Medicaid, pharmacy chains and pharmacy benefit managers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama provided information about prescriptions patients had bought during the four months before Katrina.
After an earthquake, hurricane or other disaster, representatives from the NACDS and the National Community Pharmacists Association, which represents independent pharmacies, would decide whether to open the site.
Chains would make available prescription histories from affected ZIP codes. A company that processes claims for independent pharmacies would provide data for that group. Individual independent pharmacies also could sign on to provide information.
Physicians and pharmacists would call a toll-free number, verify their credentials and get an ID and password for the portal.
There are limits to what will be available at the new site. Some pharmacies' records may not get into the database. And, because of privacy concerns, people who use the Web site won't see records for medicines used to treat "sensitive" conditions.
Dr. Roxane Townsend, then Louisiana's medical director for Medicaid and now the state's deputy health secretary, said the system was a success, at least from a technology standpoint.
"You learn that during an event is not the time to get people to use a new system," Townsend said.
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Katrina prompts disaster Rx plan
Nationwide database would store prescription details for evacuees
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS — A new Web site, refined from one rushed together after Hurricane Katrina scattered Mississippi and Louisiana residents nationwide, is ready to help doctors and pharmacists get patients' prescription histories almost instantly after a disaster.
It's called In Case of Emergency: Rx, or ICERx, after the acronym many agencies recommend people program into their cell phones to make their personal emergency contacts easy for rescue workers to find.
The site, www.icerx.org/, will be formally unveiled Tuesday during the National Association of Chain Drug Stores' annual meeting in Phoenix, said Rick Ratliff, chief operating officer of SureScripts.
The site's prototype, www.Katrinahealth.org, opened 3 1/2 weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, spreading evacuating residents nationwide.
Like people anywhere, many were on prescriptions, and most had expected their evacuations to last only a few days.
Insurance companies, Medicaid, pharmacy chains and pharmacy benefit managers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama provided information about prescriptions patients had bought during the four months before Katrina.
After an earthquake, hurricane or other disaster, representatives from the NACDS and the National Community Pharmacists Association, which represents independent pharmacies, would decide whether to open the site.
Chains would make available prescription histories from affected ZIP codes. A company that processes claims for independent pharmacies would provide data for that group. Individual independent pharmacies also could sign on to provide information.
Physicians and pharmacists would call a toll-free number, verify their credentials and get an ID and password for the portal.
There are limits to what will be available at the new site. Some pharmacies' records may not get into the database. And, because of privacy concerns, people who use the Web site won't see records for medicines used to treat "sensitive" conditions.
Dr. Roxane Townsend, then Louisiana's medical director for Medicaid and now the state's deputy health secretary, said the system was a success, at least from a technology standpoint.
"You learn that during an event is not the time to get people to use a new system," Townsend said.
