To help physicians care for Hurricane Rita evacuees, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas is making its members' clinical summaries electronically available to physicians.

The summaries contain historical and current data, such as lab results, pharmacy information and basic medical history. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas serves more than 4 million members. Some of those members won't return home for several weeks because of the hurricane.

For now, physicians who want access to the data must call BCBS Texas and ask to speak to a Hurricane Rita response team member. However, the insurer plans to make the electronic patient clinical summaries accessible to physicians as part of the provider portal on BCBS's Web site. The service was already part of a BCBS Texas' plan to give providers access to patient information, but was fast tracked because of the hurricane.

"It meets both our immediate and long-term needs," Mark Lane, director of community and public affairs for BCBS Texas, said. "It prompted us to jumpstart our project to provide patient summaries."

To create the electronic clinical summaries, the insurer extracted data on close to 830,000 BCBS Texas members who lived in areas that were evacuated before Rita hit. MEDecision, a payer-based medical management software vendor, received data tapes from BCBS by special air courier on Friday before the hurricane. By Monday morning, MEDecision had turned three years worth of claims history into patient clinical summaries for providers to access. The Texas Medical Association is working with Blue Cross and Blue Shield to let Texas physicians know that the information is available.

MEDecision is in talks with BCBS in Mississippi and Louisiana and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to determine if the service can be expanded for Hurricane Katrina evacuees, according to David St. Clair, founder and CEO of MEDecision. MEDecision is also exploring opportunities with personal health records vendors, such as Medem, to combine patient clinical summaries with information that providers and patients could update.

Currently, providers have access to medication data for Hurricane Katrina survivors through KatrinaHealth.org. MEDecision also is working with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology to explore possibilities for Hurricane Katrina evacuees, according to St. Clair.

Electronic patient clinical summaries could help physicians and other providers treat those displaced by the hurricanes who don't have access to their medical records or had their records destroyed by the floods.

"You are going to have people who are displaced over a very long period of time," he said.

St. Clair acknowledged that data would only be available to those who are BCBS members. Many hurricane evacuees are uninsured.