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CCH® BENEFITS — 10/17/08
Health Care Plans Lead Information Technology Movement
From Spencer's Benefits Reports: Health care plans are leading the health information technology (IT) movement, according to America’s Health Insurance Plan’s (AHIP) Center for Policy and Research. AHIP’s paper, Trends and Innovations in Health Information Technology, is based on telephone interviews with chief information officers and other health IT professionals at eight AHIP member health care plans, and found that plans are strongly committed to creating an interconnected health care system in which health information can be exchanged electronically.
AHIP found that health IT initiatives are being driven by four main goals:
1. Create easy-to-use tools that connect patients with physicians and make it possible to conduct business online. Health care plans are interested in making it faster and easier for patients to seek doctors’ advice, obtain prescriptions, and view health information online. For example, CIGNA HealthCare has been offering patients the opportunity to participate in “virtual house calls,” where participating members discuss nonurgent health issues and obtain advice from their doctors online. As of July 2008, AHIP reported that approximately 12,000 physicians and 170,000 members had participated in Web visits through the new system.
2. Give health care practitioners evidence-based clinical information at the point of care. AHIP found that many of these technologies also save time for doctors’ offices by streamlining the administrative process. AHIP noted that Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect has a comprehensive electronic health record system that has replaced paper charts in all of Kaiser Permanente’s outpatient facilities, and in 50% of the health care plan’s inpatient facilities.
3. Offer patients personalized, actionable information to improve their health, along with cost and quality data to help them make decisions. Members in most health care plans have access to decision-support tools to make it easy to access data on the cost of health care procedures, compare hospital quality, and choose the coverage best suited to their needs. For example, ActiveHealth Manangement, a subsidiary of Aetna, has developed an interactive personal health record (PHR) that compares data in members’ PHRs (such as tests, medical procedures, and medications) to nationally recognized medical best practices. As of May 2008, the interactive PHR had been implemented by nearly 6 million members.
4. Enable the secure exchange of health information among health care plans, hospitals, and physicians. The final goal of the health IT movement is to develop a system for health information exchange so that patients’ health records can follow them as they move among different health care providers, hospitals, and health care plans. According to AHIP, a group of Massachusetts health care plans and the Massachusetts Medicaid program have formed two organizations—the New England Health Care EDI and MA-SHARE—to simplify communications among health care plans and health care providers about patients’ health care coverage, claims, and payments. The system creates a single network that doctors and hospitals can use for both administrative transactions and the exchange of clinical information. From June 2007 to June 2008, the number of prescribers using the e-prescribing system grew from 360 to 933. During that time, the number of e-prescriptions written per month increased from 11,304 to 44,710.
For more information, visit http://www.ahipresearch.org/pdfs/CPRTrendsInHealthIT.pdf.
For more information on this and related topics, consult the CCH Pension Plan Guide, CCH Employee Benefits Management, and Spencer's Benefits Reports.
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