by Dan Garrett Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, CSC was one of many organizations eager to help the US Department of Health and Human Services recover the medical histories — especially prescription information — of the people who had been evacuated from New Orleans.

There was little chance of recovering data from physicians’ offices, hospitals, and pharmacies in New Orleans, as many of those records were on paper and were lost. Information on computer systems that were not in disaster-proof facilities was also lost. Physicians found it hard to get information from patients themselves because many of the people most at risk, the poor and elderly evacuees, weren’t clear about what medications they were on.

Some electronic records were available, notably for people on Medicaid. A joint public-private task force was formed and given permission to combine data from various sources into a database so that authorized doctors in any state could access a patient’s information. It took several days to set that up, and in the meantime people were going without their medications.

We learned on the ground in New Orleans what happens during a disaster, and it taught us what we already knew: We have to set up computerized medical record systems before disasters happen, not after.

Industrywide, health care is challenged in preparing for disasters. Other industries, such as financial services, have done much more to ensure business continuity. The health-care industry lags behind, even though study after study has found that digitizing medical records would save money — tens of billions of dollars by most estimates — and even more importantly, save lives.

Why hasn’t the health-care industry done as well in this area? One reason is that the industry is fragmented into small physicians’ offices, group practices, individual hospitals, hospital systems, government agencies, and health insurance plans. It’s difficult for all these different organizations to invest the time and resources needed to agree on standards around digitizing patient records. Some have digitized their health records, but most don’t. Many doctors’ offices use computers for billing and e-mail, but otherwise are managed the same way they have been for the last 50 years.

Cost is another factor. There’s the upfront cost of buying a software package and implementing it, and there’s also the disruption the implementation will cause to the business. Some people just don’t want to deal with it and simply will not until the risk is lower.

Concerns about interoperability are another reason for the slow adoption of electronic health records. Doctors don’t want to spend $40,000 on a computerized practice management system when they can’t be sure it will be interoperable with other networks in the industry. Before taking the leap, they want to know there are standards and policies that will allow them to communicate across the industry.

The factors that have slowed adoption are being addressed. Last fall, the US Department of Health and Human Services awarded contracts to CSC and three other companies to develop prototypes for a nationwide health information network.

The movement toward electronic medical records is speeding up, and not only because the nation was horrified by the Katrina disaster. Digitized patient data will reduce medical errors, improve patient outcomes, and accelerate the research and discovery of new drugs. Large employers are getting behind it because the rising cost of health care has become a huge competitive disadvantage for them.

We’re moving more quickly for two good reasons: Even without earthquakes, hurricanes, or other disasters, electronic medical records save lives and money.

Dan Garrett is vice president and managing partner of CSC’s Global Health Solution practice, a division within the company’s US Consulting Group. He is responsible for leading all health-care activities across CSC.