During recent natural disasters response to the need for electronic medical assistance is almost immediate, establishing collaborations and making vital health care records accessible in real-time to make critical decisions and provide quality care. If the health care industry can respond to disaster relief with health IT efforts in a snap then why can't the industry respond to the mounting need for health IT in non-disaster time?

In an effort to provide assistance to victims of the floods ravaging Indiana, the state Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) announced the creation of the Flood Victims eHealth Support Center on June 20, 2008. Hundreds of houses and businesses have been flooded and victims evaluated to shelters. As a result, paper-based medical records are not accessible in some localities leading to the necessity of accessing EHRs. The relief effort will provide doctors with obtainable medical information for treatment in a timely manner to provide a high quality of care. The Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) is handling the calls and collaborating on the initiative with the Regenstrief Institute and the Electronic Data Systems (EDS). The information is being made available through the Indiana Network for Patient Care (INPC).

The flooding in IN is demonstrating how public and private health care stakeholders, in particular state government and health information exchanges, can swiftly collaborate on health IT projects to provide more effective health care services. Natural disasters are one of many drivers demonstrating the necessity of electronic health care and can serve as case studies for moving forward with adoption and implementation. As with Hurricane Katrina, doctors in similar disaster response situations are left with a fragmented medical history, if at all, which can lead to increased errors, higher costs, duplication, lack of efficiency and lower quality of care due to so many missing pieces. While escalated in a disaster, these factors are present in everyday health care services.