The first piece of news appeared a few days ago.
Study Predicts Big Savings from PHRs
November 13, 2008
A new study makes the bold claim that widely adopted personal health records could save the U.S. health care system more than $19 billion annually after expenses.
The study, from the Center for Information Technology Leadership at Partners Healthcare System in Boston, bases the big-ticket savings conclusion on several major assumptions.
The study concludes that providing interoperable PHRs to 80% of the population would cost $3.7 billion in startup costs and $1.9 billion in annual maintenance costs. And it finds that these PHRs would save more than $21 billion annually, with most of the savings going to payers.
The predicted savings break down as follows:
* Sharing of complete test results: $7.9 billion
* Congestive heart failure monitoring: $6.3 billion
* E-visits supported by PHRs: $4.8 billion
* Electronic medication renewals: $1.1 billion
* Smoking cessation management: $1.04 billion
* Electronic appointment scheduling: $170 million
* Pre-encounter questionnaires: $72 million
* Sharing of complete medication lists: $9.2 million
The maximum savings would result from interoperable PHRs that rely on regional aggregation of patients’ health care data, the study concludes. These PHRs would be populated with data from all regional data sources via standards-based automated data interchange.
More here:
The full report is available here:
http://citl.org/_pdf/CITL_PHR_Report.pdf
A summary press release is available here:
http://citl.org/research/pdf/CITL_PHR_Press_Release.pdf
If PHRs can deliver even half of these benefits I will take two thanks!
Second we have the following:
Medicare launches PHR pilot in Arizona, Utah
Healthcare IT News
By Bernie Monegain, Editor 11/12/08
PHOENIX - Medicare beneficiaries in Arizona and Utah are poised to begin a personal health record pilot in early 2009, and on Wednesday Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt announced the four participating PHR companies.
Medicare will give beneficiaries a choice among Google Health, HealthTrio, NoMoreClipboard. com and PassportMD.
"This pilot is a major step forward for Medicare," Leavitt said at a news conference in Phoenix on Wednesday. Leavitt called in from Washington where he had been presiding over a meeting of the American Health Information Community."It will provide information and tools that will empower consumers to manage their health better," he said. "Importantly, the pilot provides beneficiaries with a choice of products to meet their individual needs."
More here
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10407
It seems, on the basis of news item number 1, a good idea to be conducting some serious pilots and to identify which vendor offerings work well.
All in all a good week for the PHR.
David.
1 comment:
This reads as if they are talking about a SEHR or some combination of a SEHR and a PHR. A PHR on its own cannot deliver these benefits because it lacks the assurance of the source of the data.
With the acronym soup we are caught in with all the different types of health/medical records one needs to be very careful to define exactly what one is talking about.
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