HFMA NEWS

Kaiser Permanente and Microsoft Corp. announced June 9 that the two companies will pilot health data transfers between Kaiser Permanente’s My Health Manager and Microsoft’s Health Vault consumer health platform. The program is expected to unveil new strategies for expanding consumer access to online health information and management tools.

Connecting My Health Manager to the HealthVault platform will allow users to combine personal health information from Kaiser and other sources, including health and wellness management applications and devices such as blood pressure monitors.

Kaiser’s 159,000 employees will be eligible to participate in the pilot program. Participation in the employee pilot is voluntary and is designed to test the ability to transfer data easily and securely, and ensure that the functionality allows easy access to individual personal health information, as well as the ability to manage those data. If the pilot is successful, the program will be expanded to include Kaiser Permanentes more than 8 million members. Read the press release.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on June 6 announced that an additional $15 million will be distributed to State Health Insurance Assistance Programs (SHIPs) to help people with Medicare get more information about their healthcare choices.

The $15 million is the second of three installments of SHIP funding in 2008 and will be distributed in June. CMS will distribute more than $50 million to the nation’s SHIPs in 2008; of that, $36 million was distributed on April 1 and an additional $1.5 million will be distributed in performance-based awards to SHIPs in September. This funding represents a $20 million increase in SHIP funding over FY07.

SHIPs are state-based programs that use community-based networks to provide Medicare beneficiaries with local, personalized assistance on a wide variety of Medicare and health insurance topics. CMS expects the SHIPs to use the increased 2008 funding to conduct community-based programs targeted at reaching more beneficiaries who are unable to access other sources of information such as the CMS online tools. Read the press release.