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Katrina hampers data-collection efforts in the Gulf region

Quality Improvement Monitor, September 15, 2005

Hurricane Katrina may impact the ability of some Gulf Coast hospitals to report quality data to CMS, an American Hospital Association official told the federal government last week.

The storm, which struck Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama on August 29, damaged or destroyed many medical records at affected hospitals, Nancy Foster, vice president for quality and patient safety policy at the American Hospital Association, told the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The damaged records may prevent hospitals from abstracting data to report to CMS and its Hospital Compare Web site, www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.

Many of the hospitals that continued operating after the hurricane are now treating patients transferred from other areas, Foster said, which can hinder data-collection efforts because the hospitals do not have complete information for those patients.

Officials from the Hospital Quality Alliance, the public-private collaborative that promotes data reporting and helped create the Hospital Compare site, are now determining how to proceed with data collection for the affected hospitals, Foster said.

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