Health insurers create personal health records
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(InfoWorld) - Two large health insurance trade groups based in the U.S. have released a model for personal health records, a portable, Web-based tool that includes a customer's insurance claims, immunization records, medication records and other health information. America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, whose members provide health insurance to about two thirds of U.S. residents, unveiled the personal health record model Wednesday. The two groups saw the importance of working together on the project, said Susan Pisano, vice president of communications for AHIP. "This is really an effort that cries out for collaboration," she said. U.S. President George Bush has pushed for electronic health records to be available to all U.S. residents by 2014. Backers of such records say they will improve the efficiency of the U.S. health-care system and cut down on errors such as drug interaction problems. Personal health records, or PHRs, "may be one of our most important contributions to helping improve health care," Ronald Williams chairman, chief executive and president of insurer Aetna Inc., said in a statement. PHRs are similar to other electronic health records, although they include less specific treatment information. Electronic health records typically are used by health-care providers to store and manage detailed clinical information. Patients will be able to enter information into their PHRs, in addition to information from pharmacies, laboratories and medical providers, the groups said. The model released Wednesday includes definitions of data elements that should be included in PHRs, such as risk factors, family history, health-care facilities and medications taken. The model also includes standards for the PHRs to be portable between insurers and providers, and rules about when insurers can share the information. Insurers can send the information to a new insurer only after the patient gives consent and has enrolled in the new insurance plan, Pisano said. Those tight sharing rules were designed to address concerns about the PHRs used by insurance underwriters, she said. The PHR model also set 2008 as the deadline for insurers to incorporate the data elements and adopt the portability standards, she added. The groups said the U.S. is still "many years" away from a fully interoperable health records system. But Dr. Robert Kolodner, interim national coordinator for health information technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, praised the groups' efforts. The new model is a "step forward in the national health IT agenda," he said in a statement. Earlier this month, five major corporations -- Applied Materials Inc., British Petroleum America Inc., Intel Corp., Pitney Bowes Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- announced plans to fund the development of a Web-based system that would allow their employees and retirees to access and maintain personal medical records. The companies said the plan could help them cut health-care costs.
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IBM and the University of Florida are working on technology that lets doctors remotely monitor patient health.
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Part-time workers, contractors, and early retirees who usually wouldn't qualify for corporate health insurance could get coverage under a plan unveiled yesterday by a consortium of dozens of large companies.
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Like it or not, health savings accounts are coming soon to an employer near you.
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Many companies are playing a bigger role in managing and monitoring their workersâ health in an effort to cut health care costs.
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A new website is being launched in an attempt to strengthen patient choice.
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By MARTHA McKAY, STAFF WRITER  Ever worry about being so sick that you need a doctor's care while stuck in a strange city, far from your family physician and your medical records?  Now imagine handing the new doctor a tiny data storage device which she then plugs into a PC.
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A group of the nationâs largest for-profit hospital chains plan to propose that individuals be required to have basic health coverage.
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Five major US corporations have joined forces to create a "medical Internet" on which some 2.5 million workers can bring together their personal health records in one secure location, providing access to everything from prescriptions and cholesterol readings to medical histories.
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An improved ability to share medical records electronically via IT systems is still many years away, according to health care industry officials who testified at a U.S. House hearing.
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The national organization that ranks health insurers said it has chosen Harvard Pilgrim Health Care as the top health plan in the country, based on several quality measures and a survey of its members.
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All 1,300 members of the America's Health Insurance Plans trade association have agreed to support selected industry standards in personal health record systems for their combined 200 million clients.
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Let's talk about health insurance for small business owners and the self-employed.
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Keeping mum on care records Plans to upload medical records onto a central database - the so-called spine - will put patient confidentiality at risk, Connecting for Health (CfH) has been told by its own consultants.â¦
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(Source: AT&T)  The federal government has awarded more than $139 million to help healthcare providers move medical records more easily within a geographic region. The hope is that Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIO) will be the building blocks of a National Health Information Network.
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Consumers face what many health care experts describe as two distinct tracks of care for those lucky enough to have insurance through their employer.
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Computerization of health care record keeping remains both a need and a challenge, said IT and health care dignitaries at an IBM-sponsored conference in San Jose, Calif. on Monday.