(ANNOUNCER OPEN)
This is Sean Hall in Washington for Red Cross Radio. Victims of hurricanes Rita and Katrina come from all walks of life and all levels of medical need. Thousands of people left behind their medications, wheelchairs, and other items they need to live their daily lives. One group of patients not talked about much is cancer patients. Thousands of them were also displaced by those hurricanes in ways other than just homes. Dr. Mark Clanton is the Deputy Director at the National Cancer Institute. He joins us to talk about how the hurricanes affected cancer patients.

First question Dr. Clanton, how is the National Cancer Institute directly involved with disaster relief? That is not something I think the institute would do.

(CLANTON):
Well, actually the National Cancer Institute, whose mission is primarily research into cancer therapy and cancer diagnosis, is not really set up to do disaster relief. We were really pressed to be innovative and come up with a way of helping cancer patients displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

(ANNOUNCER):
And how are you doing that? Did you have to come up with some kind of program in about 45 seconds to do this? Did you have anything in place? Tell me what happened.

(CLANTON):
What we did in a period of about 48 hours was learn how to use our cancer information service, which is a 1-800 phone number that’s available nationally. We learned how to use that service to allow people to call a single phone number from the affected area to reconnect to doctors if they were on research protocols to how to get back on those protocols and receive medications. We used that one number and then worked with groups like the American Society of Clinical Oncology, who had volunteer physicians going to take care of cancer patients displaced by Rita and Katrina.

(ANNOUNCER):
A lot of cancer patients displaced by this, I would think. Did you ever get any idea of any of the numbers involved?

(CLANTON):
The easiest number we were able to come to right away had to do with the number of cancer patients who were on research protocols sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. There were over 7600 patients in the affected area who were already on research protocols, and we know a number of them were affected. Lots of them, by the way, were coming through research being sponsored at LSU and at Tulane Medical Center in New Orleans.

(ANNOUNCER):
Talking with Dr. Mark Clanton, Deputy Director of the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Clanton, when it comes to cancer patients who are disaster victims, what did you do about cancer patients not on protocols? How did you find out about them?

(CLANTON):
This is an important point. When the medical records were destroyed for patients who were just starting chemotherapy or in the middle of chemotherapy a lot of important information was lost. What is happening is that many of those patients, as they are being reconnected to volunteer doctors and showing up at new hospitals, have to work with their doctors to kind of reconstruct where they were in their treatment and what drugs they were on.

(ANNOUNCER):
It’s kind of like going to a brand new doctor all over again. You got to tell the whole story and I assume with some of these cancer patients and, having been not a cancer patient myself, but involved with the medical system having been hospitalized and stuff like that, you probably get tired of telling your story multiple times. That’s one of the benefits of having one doctor and sticking with them. But I guess in the case of Rita and Katrina it wasn’t really possible for a lot of these victims to get to their regular doctors. So, the next question here, Dr. Clanton, is what did you do for a lot of these patients? Were you able to get them meds? Were you able to get them back on their regimens? Is there any kind of success rate that you’ve been able to measure so far?

(CLANTON):
Based on calls that were coming into our 1-800-4-CANCER number and also the number of page views on the website, we were able to determine that we could connect people back to volunteer oncologists and volunteer medical resources in and around the surrounding area. The final numbers aren’t in yet, but we do know and have stories where people were directed back in to care. We’ll have more details as we are able to count better numbers.

(ANNOUNCER):
Do disasters like hurricane Rita and hurricane Katrina make you think about having a plan in place just in case another one of these comes along?

(CLANTON):
I think it is going to be important for planners or people involved in disaster and recovery planning to begin thinking about people with chronic medical illnesses. We’re talking about cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions where medical records are important and ongoing treatment is important. So a large scale plan needs to be put in place in terms of helping people with chronic illnesses. As far as the NCI is concerned, we’ve learned a lot about connecting and reconnecting people back to their care. I think we can do a better job, at least for cancer patients.

(ANNOUNCER):
There are a lot of people that object to having a national medical ID program, but wouldn’t this prove to be a good case for it?

(CLANTON):
I think we are going to have to figure out how to store medical records and make them portable. Now we can debate over what form that’s going to take. They do need to be secure; they do need to be safe. But in this case, with medical records being destroyed and we’re unable to recover them, it is very important that we learn how to make medical information portable for patients, particularly those with chronic illnesses who have very complex treatments.

(ANNOUNCER):
Anything else you’d like to add?

(CLANTON):
I want to reiterate that the biggest thing we learned here is that we are going to have to make medical records portable. Number two, we are going to have to provide specific plans to take care of people who have chronic, ongoing conditions. Cancer turns out to be a really great model to begin understanding that because treating cancer patients is a complex issue that really relies on good medical information.

(ANNOUNCER):
That is Dr. Mark Clanton, who is Deputy Director at the National Cancer Institute, based just outside Washington, D.C. For Red Cross Radio. This is Sean Hall in Washington, XM Satellite Radio News.