Working to ensure the availability and portability of health records in the wake of hurricanes or tornadoes, four Gulf Coast states and six states in the East and Midwest have set up infrastructure to safeguard access to critical health information.

Health information exchange programs in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin and West Virginia are working with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to enable exchange of health information among providers caring for patients who are displaced from their homes.

All of the state HIE programs participating in the initiative currently have established at least one operational interstate connection and are working with other states including Arkansas and Mississippi, officials say.

The 10-state initiative relies on the Direct protocol, an ONC-led public-private collaboration that allows for the secure exchange of health information over the Internet.

"Through disasters like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy and large tornadoes in Alabama and Joplin, Missouri, in 2011 and more recently in Moore, Oklahoma, we have learned the importance of protecting patients' health records through electronic tools like health information exchanges," said Farzad Mostashari, MD, national coordinator for health IT, in a press statement.

"Patients are better off when states and health information exchange organizations work together to ensure that health information can follow patients when they need it the most."

A guidebook, published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, is also available to help primary care clinicians connect their patients' electronic health records to a local HIE hub and regional health information organizations.

The guide, Regional Health e-Decisions: A Guide to Connect Health Information Exchange in Primary Care, is available here.

The Southeast Regional Health IT and Health Information Exchange Collaboration is leading this collaboration. SERCH was funded through ONC's State Health Policy Consortium and its members include Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.

Since SERCH began in April 2010, similar collaborations, using a variety of methods, have helped to resolve cross-border barriers toward facilitating the multi-state exchange of health information, officials say.

In 2012, SERCH completed an analysis of barriers to health information exchange and issued recommendations for developing HIE infrastructure to support disaster preparedness and response.

In its final report, SERCH recommended a phased approach to use existing data sources such as health plans and state agencies to overcome barriers to HIE across states. It can be found here.

"The SERCH effort will enable health care providers to contact a patient's health plans and available health care providers for information about the patient's medical history when it is most needed," said Nicole Lurie, MD, assistant secretary for preparedness and response in the Department of Health and Human Services. "But patients can help protect their own information and that of their children by saving it electronically."

[See also: In disasters such as Sandy, HIE is 'as critical as having roads, as having fire hydrants']