Doctors puzzled over Katrina patients

Dr. Jay Brooks had to do an unusual kind of sleuthing before he could diagnose and treat the patients from New Orleans who washed into his Baton Rouge office after Hurricane Katrina. Their doctors back home had done the usual tests and blood work, but Brooks had to reconstruct what they found from the bag of prescription drugs the patients handed him.

"There were patients who came out of New Orleans who sat in my office and said 'I have cancer.' I asked what kind, and they said 'I don't know.' I looked at the drugs they had and could kind of figure out what was going on," Brooks said.

For Brooks, the chief of hematology-oncology at Ochsner Baton Rouge, the bewilderment that many Katrina evacuees showed about their medical conditions underscores the need to create a permanent, electronic medical record that doctors can view if patients find themselves displaced by a hurricane or otherwise in need of medical care far from home.

from the Times Picayune