Foster children and pregnant women are the first targets
October 27, 2009
October 27, 2009 -- Imagine having your personal health records stored in a bank account. The next time you went to the doctor, you’d just need to stuff a card into your wallet that had all your health records, and you wouldn’t need to answer the same questions over and over again about your medical history.
That’s exactly the motivation behind a pilot project that gets underway in January for people on Medicaid, thanks to a $5.5 million federal grant from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The project is slated to go statewide in March.
Web MD is developing and marketing the technology, while OCHIN will deploy that technology and focus on engaging patients to use the new system, which will be known as The Health Record Bank of Oregon.
“Interesting to have a marriage between a for-profit business serving mostly employer-based plan members and OCHIN, a mission driven not-for-profit serving the safety net – groundbreaking,” said Barry Kast, project director.
The goal: have at least 30,000 participants by March 2011, according to Kast. “We’re excited about this; we’re building transitional technology, and there’ll be a central repository for information under the patient’s control. What we learn will be important for the next generation.”
If the project is successful in recruiting patients, the next target is public employees, followed by private employers. “We’ll try to find a business model and sustain it,” said Kast, who intends to step away once the Medicaid project gets off the ground, leaving in charge Douglas Jones, who’s the project manager.
Initially the project will target:
- Children in foster care;
- Consumers with chronic disease conditions such as diabetes, asthma, congestive heart failure;
- Pregnant women;
- Consumers receiving disease management services from a health plan or a provider;
- Consumers who use a high number of prescription medications; and,
- Consumers with frequent clinic and emergency room visits.