Medicare Testing New Tools to Help Beneficiaries Better Manage Own Health Care

Medicare Testing New Tools To Help Beneficiaries Better Manage Own Health Care

CMS has announced a new project that seeks to test the feasibility of integrating Medicare claims history information with other Internet-based tools, intended to allow people with Medicare to track their health care services and monitor their health care.

“By using emerging technologies and tools, people with Medicare will be better able to manage their health care, resulting in improved quality in the care they receive and ensuring that care is provided more efficiently,” said CMS Administrator Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D. “The steps we are taking today will test whether Medicare’s current data will help to populate useful personal health records for Medicare beneficiaries.”

CMS has awarded two contracts to test the transfer of Medicare claims data into Personal Health Records (PHRs). The six month contracts were awarded to ViPS and Capstone Government Solutions.

The goals of the project are to:

 Test the feasibility of using Medicare claims data in PHRs  Assess how to best communicate data from existing CMS systems to PHR tools  Evaluate the information included in existing PHRs, along with how they would best help Medicare beneficiaries’ care  Evaluate how existing PHRs address security and privacy issues.

Although not widely publicized, Medicare beneficiaries are currently able to receive personalized information about their Medicare benefits and services. Although these are not true personal health records, users can save, update, and keep a record of their self- entered prescription drug and pharmacy information that can be retrieved at any time with a password and confirmation number. This allows them to have a record of their current drug list with them at all times.

The My.Medicare.gov internet portal is available to beneficiaries nationwide but has only 140,000 registered users out of the millions who are eligible to establish an account.

CMS believes that as My.Medicare.gov expands and provides greater functionality, the use of PHRs will continue to grow.