Health Plans Participate in CMS PHR Pilot to Help Medicare Beneficiaries Better Manage Their Health
WASHINGTON, June 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The health insurance plan community is collaborating with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to encourage Medicare beneficiaries to optimize their health using Internet-based tools. Health insurers are part of a pilot that enables beneficiaries to access and use personal health records (PHRs) provided by their Medicare Advantage and/or Medicare Part D plans through http://www.mymedicare.gov/.
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PHRs enable individual patients and their designated caregivers to view and manage health information and play a greater role in their own health care. PHRs are distinct from electronic medical records, which providers use to store and manage detailed clinical information.
The participating health insurers include HIP USA, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
The new collaboration with CMS builds on an insurance industry project, announced in December, 2006, designed to provide consumers across the country with greater access to the benefits of PHRs. Members of the two sponsoring organizations — America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) — cover over 200 million people. About 90 million individuals already have PHRs through health insurers. This includes individuals who are covered through their employers, as well as an increasing number of individuals covered under public programs.
AHIP and BCBSA worked together to identify the core information to include in PHRs, including patient histories, medications, immunizations, allergies, risks, plans of care, and other information that physicians identified as the key data. They developed and pilot-tested standards that enable consumers to transfer PHR data when they change coverage. This ensures that PHRs will be portable from health insurer to health insurer as consumers have requested.
There is consensus among stakeholders that the widespread adoption of health information technology will lead to safer, more effective health care. Experts believe adoption of technology will reduce preventable errors, such as medication errors, increase compliance with recommended treatments, improve treatment for people with chronic disease, and contribute to lower health care costs.
“Health insurance plans are in a unique position to make a contribution to the nation’s efforts to achieve full interoperability, and we are pleased to work with CMS to extend the benefits of PHRs to more people who are covered by Medicare,” said AHIP President and CEO Karen Ignagni.
The CMS pilot will run for eighteen months, and during this time CMS will collect data to assess the use of PHRs and identify the features beneficiaries prefer. They will also determine how best to conduct outreach and education and how best to encourage adoption and ongoing use of PHRs. The initiative launched by the health insurance industry in December involves working with a leading consumer organization — the National Health Council — on ways to best encourage adoption and use of PHRs.
Good health care in the 21st century means having the right information in the right hands at the right time. Individuals need real-time access to health information that may be dispersed among a number of physicians, hospitals, pharmacies, and other health care providers.
But we are many years away from having a system that is fully interoperable. The insurance industry effort is viewed as a building block for future efforts, and the industry is working closely with those that are developing standards to ensure that health plan based PHRs are compatible with standards as they are developed.
America’s Health Insurance Plans — Providing Health Benefits to More
Than 200 Million Americans
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America’s Health Insurance Plans
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