Emergency preparednessMedical registry systems are becoming part of emergency preparedness plans

Communities across the country are exploring medical registry systems as part of their emergency preparedness plans, but Ana-Marie Jones, executive director of Collaborating Agencies Responding to Disasters, warns that effective registries require regular maintenance and full commitment of staffing and financial sources. “Registries are simply not created equal,” said Jones, adding that a medical registry is not just a list but a system that gives information about selected groups of people, and as circumstances of the people change, so must the registry.

Using medical registries for emergency planning has been critical for New Orleans city officials, especially after Hurricane Katrina. Today, the city’s Health Department no longer use a pencil-and-paper file system stored in metal cabinets to maintain its Special Needs Registry. “It didn’t work that well,” said Charlotte Parent, the city’s health director. “It did help them identify some people, but the logistics of using something like that was very difficult.” Government Technology  reports that New Orleans’ registry of vulnerable residents, who may require special attention during emergencies, is now available on an Excel spreadsheet, in which officials can easily access and update information, such as the number of residents who use breathing machines in different neighborhoods. The New Orleans Health Department is also looking for a new system to store its registry’s data and add new features like automated alert calls, conduct automated reporting, and locate residents using geospatial capabilities.

St. Louis deployed its Functional Needs Registry after a power outage occurred in 2006. Before then, city workers could only locate vulnerable residents who were already in the city’s home-delivered meals program, since the city had access to their information. Today, the database is GPS-linked and can locate anyone who has a mobility issue in selected ZIP codes.

Yet, just because residents are listed in the city’s registry does not mean that help and services will always be delivered during emergencies. Jones, an advocate for vulnerable communities, wants emergency officials to inform residents that services are not guaranteed. “Our hope is that people understand by having them on the registry, there will be people who know where they are and that they’ll be, as best as can be possible at the time, taken care of,” said David P. Sykora, executive director of the St. Louis Area Agency on Aging.

Since medical registries contain confidential health and personal information, security is vital. Recently, the St. Louis legislature granted protection for everyone in the city’s registry, making it illegal to make the registry’s data public. “You have many people who in an emergency need help but they don’t want their name out there on some registry because they’re afraid they’re going to get labeled or they’re afraid it’s government intrusion,” Sykora said. Now that the database is restricted, the city will launch a marketing effort to register more people. St. Louis has roughly 8,000 people in its functional needs database, and many more are expected to join via online registration, over the phone, and on paper. The city is relying on volunteer organizations to keep the registry updated and to send registrants semi-annual notifications asking them to update their information. “Updating the data is the most time-consuming effort,” Sykora said. Yet it is vital to keeping the registry useful. “The key is keeping the addresses accurate in the system. Garbage in is garbage out.”