Remembering the Health Outcomes of Hurricane Katrina A Decade Later: A Report on Katrina Evacuees Discharged Post ‘Emergent’ Care in a Houston-based Emergency Department

Abstract

Introduction: Existing literature is missing a description of a displaced population in the after math of Hurricane Katrina, who were seen and discharged from emergency departments of a Houston hospital system 10 years ago.
Hypothesis/Problem: Health effects of Hurricane Katrina are an important public health topic that is not sufficiently discussed in the existing literature. Failure to provide this information is largely due to the lack of appropriate, representative data and absence of a systematic data capture process.
Methods: A retrospective Electronic Health Record review of ‘Katrina evacuees’, obtained from Houston Fire Department run call data, was used to identify: visit type, top three ICD-9-coded diagnoses, medical insurance, number of visits and emergency medical service utilization.
Results: The majority of patient visits were by Black, female gender and adults between 19 and 44 years. The leading diagnosis was hypertension. Circulatory system related diagnoses were nearly three times higher among Katrina evacuees than national data from 2005 and 2007. Most patients used emergency medical service services [815(60%)], had one emergency department visit [570(70%)], and reported Medicaid [577(40%)] or self-pay [425(30%)] as the insurance source.
Conclusion: Disaster planning for the aftermath of natural disasters would benefit from knowledge pertaining to known chronic and non-chronic care needs of populations in pre-specified areas. Variance in primary diagnoses suggests the need for published data reporting annual primary diagnoses in local EDs by region. Access to this information via the internet contributes to estimating the likelihood of ED volume of chronic and non-chronic visit demand,1 providing foundational information for disaster preparedness plans nationwide.