The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on June 20 a new pilot program to enable certain beneficiaries to access and use a personal health record (PHR) provided through participating health plans. The data that will be made available to the beneficiaries include name, address, and policy number as well as lists of their medications and medical conditions.
The PHR tools will allow beneficiaries to look up information about their own medications and medical conditions to help them manage their health care. Beneficiaries are in charge of their own PHR and will control who is able to see the information it contains.
CMS will launch the program this month in conjunction with four health plans to test the use of their PHRs--HIP USA, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The pilot is expected to run for 18 months, during which CMS will collect both quantitative and qualitative data to assess the use, usefulness, usability, and feature preferences of the tools. The goals of the project are to determine the features that are most attractive to Medicare beneficiaries, identify the minimum content and functionality for the PHRs tools, and assess the best methods for outreach and education to encourage adoption and ongoing use.
