Computerworld - A trade association representing health insurance companies and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association announced yesterday that they are developing a model for electronic personal health records that could be used by the 200 million people they cover.
The Blue Cross organizations and America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) -- a trade association representing health insurers -- have developed a private, Web-based personal health record (PHR) that will be maintained by the insurer that processes a patient's claims and administrative information, according to a statement. The PHRs, which have been designed to be portable so a person can take health data when changing health insurers, will include information such as patient demographics, treatment history, medications, drug allergies and immunizations.
PHRs are designed to allow individuals to view and manage their own health information. They are increasingly seen as a way to reduce duplicate testing, medical errors and other events that can lead to higher health care costs. That's because consumers can share the centralized data with health care providers instead of relying on fragmented health history data maintained by physicians and hospitals.
Last week, five large companies, including British Petroleum America Inc., Intel Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., announced plans to fund a Web-based PHR that can be used to store health information on the 2.5 million employees, dependents and retirees who have health insurance through one of the five companies.
The health insurers worked together to identify the core information to include in PHRs and tested standards to enable users to transfer PHR data when they change insurance plans, according to a statement.
"Health insurance plans are in a unique position to make a contribution through consumer-focused PHRs," AHIP president and CEO Karen Ignagni said in the statement. "Until now, the information contained in PHRs has not been consistent -- a concern that led several physician organizations to urge the industry to identify the core data for PHR content -- or portable from health plan to health plan."
The groups did not provide details about when the PHRs may be available or the technology they are using for the model.
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