One of the major health problems people faced during Hurricane Katrina was losing contact with their doctors, and access to their medical records.

But for Hurricane Gustav that problem was solved for one patient.

Now there is a way that you and your doctors can stay in touch everyday no matter where you are.

It was a few short weeks ago. Hurricane Gustav was coming. People were leaving. Among them, LSUHSC internist and pediatrician Dr. Brent Wallis headed east to Point Clear, Ala., and his patient Tammy Giardina of Marrero headed north to Oxford, Miss. It was not an easy trip for Tammy. Just a few days earlier, she had surgery to remove her gall bladder.

"It was tough driving, you know, so many hours and everything so it was tough right after surgery," says Tammy Giardina.

 And then while separated by hundreds of miles, Tammy needed some quick medical advice.

"I was having a lot of pain and a lot of problems and I had a question and I didn't know what to do," she adds.

But for this doctor-patient team it was simple because both are on ihealthrecord.org.

"This is an on line personal health record that is free to patients that any one can sign up for and it's basically a way to make their records more portable during times of evacuation," says Dr. Brent Wallis, the LSU Health Sciences Center Director of  Electronic Health Records.

Tammy had already filled out her medical history, medications, surgeries, vaccines. And her doctor, Dr. Wallis was already a member. So all she had to do was log on and send a private, secured, confidential e-mail to him.

His Blackberry then alerted him that he was needed by a patient. So Dr. Wallis logged on, read Tammy's concerns, and replied back to her while at the same time electronically alerting a pharmacy in Oxford to fill a prescription for her.

"I think it's a great way to keep in contact with your doctor especially when you're away from the city and away from your doctor. It's a good way just to ease your mind because I didn't know what was wrong," says Tammy. 

"The convenience of it though is that a permanent record is kept and so there is documentation as to what the exchange was," adds Dr. Wallis. 

Doctors pay a $400 yearly fee for the non-profit service and say it saves lots of time, not playing phone tag, to refill prescriptions or give lab results. And patients like that they can print out their medical history from the site rather than constantly filling out forms for every new doctor.

To sign up for the free site go to links on 4.