MEDICARE TESTING PERSONAL HEALTH RECORDS (PHR) TO HELP BENEFICIARIES BETTER MANAGE OWN HEALTH CARE


Medicare joins a growing number private payers providing PHRs to beneficiaries. It remains to see how accurate claims based data will be. Use of ICD 9 instead of ICD 10 risks a reduction of specificity. SV

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today announced a new project expanding its efforts to encourage Medicare beneficiaries to take advantage of Internet-based tools to track their health care services and provide them with other resources to better communicate with their providers.

This pilot program will enable certain beneficiaries to access and use a Personal Health Record (PHR) provided through participating health plans, and accessible through www.mymedicare.gov. In general, a PHR is a collection of information about an individual’s health or health care services, such as medical conditions, hospitalizations, doctor visits and medications. The data that will be made available to the beneficiaries include registration information such as name, address, and policy number as well as lists of their medications and medical conditions.

This month, CMS will launch the program in conjunction with four health plans to test the use of their PHRs. The plans are: HIP USA, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Each plan has a unique PHR tool that will be accessible to beneficiaries. The availability of different tools will provide valuable information to CMS on the various features offered, including which are most popular and useful to the individual.

CMS