Report finds Texas needs way to track patients during evacuations

[rainbow4321]

60 people dying in the traffic jam/evacuations being called a
"fabulous job"..WTF??????????????


http://www.mysanantonio.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8H2LB28J.html

Texas should develop a way to track special needs patients during hurricane evacuations, ensure their medical records are sent with them and let emergency responders know which hospitals and shelters have room for them, according to a report released Tuesday on the state's medical response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita.


Dr. Eduardo Sanchez, commissioner of state health services, said his department is already prepared for the hurricane season that begins June 1 but will use the recommendations to improve their plans.

<snip>
About 60 people died along the state's traffic-clogged highways during the chaotic evacuation before Hurricane Rita last September. Twenty-three of the victims were Houston-area nursing home patients killed when their bus exploded near Dallas.


"I think we did a fabulous job," he said. "The preparedness that was already in place helped us, but I think there's some lessons learned."

[Czolgosz]

1. This is not the only problem facing Texas medical patients:

Angie Meza's daughter, Monica, was just 4 years old when she developed a fever with flu-like symptoms....Her blood-oxygen was dangerously low, and she was admitted to the hospital. While inserting a central line to administer medications, health-care workers punctured a vein, which led to bleeding in her right lung. The trauma led to multiple organ failure, and Monica rapidly deteriorated because her immune system had shut down. ....How did this happen? Unfortunately, the Meza family will probably never know. Because of the radical legal changes passed just two months before she took her daughter to the hospital with a cold, Angie Meza can not get any answers about why her child died or who is responsible. Our laws have been distorted so badly in favor of the insurance companies that there is often no avenue for average Texans to find answers when needless tragedies occur.

The epidemic of medical malpractice has injured Angie Meza twice — once when she lost her daughter, and again when the changes enacted at the behest of insurance industry lobbyists blocked her ability to learn how and why her daughter died. As she told the Austin American-Statesman in a recent front-page story: "I wasn't looking for money or to get rich. I wanted answers."...so-called tort reforms pushed by special interests and the insurance industry ... is a poison pill that has done nothing to increase access, lower the cost or improve the quality of our health care. We got a managed care system for court access, with Texas taxpayers footing the bill for medical negligence.... this has served the interests of insurance companies quite well. By making it harder for families devastated by medical malpractice to hold wrongdoers accountable, the insurance industry makes more money It is simple arithmetic: fewer claims equal larger profits.

However, let's not confuse fewer claims with less malpractice. There is no evidence that patients are any safer or that less malpractice is being committed. It only means that victims of the ongoing malpractice epidemic are shut out....In fact, Texas patients are at greater risk than ever. Now, health-care workers who are serial malpractice offenders, are drunk or are simply unqualified can continue to recklessly practice medicine in our state without facing the consequences....the number of medical errors is on the rise nationwide, with Texas ranking in the bottom quarter nationally for patient safety, and the Centers for Disease Control has found that one in 20 hospital patients contract an infection while being treated for an unrelated ailment.

<http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/04/12winslow_edit.html>

[babylonsister]

2. How about also tracking victims of the government's

ineptness? Not all those that died were patients. Some died of carbon monoxide poisoning sitting in traffic.