The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced a new project expanding its efforts to encourage Medicare beneficiaries to take advantage of Internet-based tools to track their health care services and provide them with other resources to better communicate with their providers.

This pilot program will enable certain beneficiaries to access and use a Personal Health Record (PHR) provided through participating health plans, and accessible through www.mymedicare.gov. In general, a PHR is a collection of information about an individual's health or health care services, such as medical conditions, hospitalizations, doctor visits and medications. The data that will be made available to the beneficiaries include registration information such as name, address, and policy number as well as lists of their medications and medical conditions.

The PHR tools will allow the beneficiary to look up information about their own medications and medical conditions to help them manage their own health care. The beneficiary is in charge of his or her own PHR and will control who is able to see the information it contains. Sharing this information with healthcare providers from the PHR will be entirely up to the beneficiary.
"By collaborating with Medicare Advantage and Part D Drug Plans which already offer Personal Health Record tools to their commercial members, people with Medicare will have access to information that will enable them to be more involved with their health care services." said Leslie V. Norwalk, acting administrator of CMS. "The steps we are taking today will also help CMS understand how to best educate beneficiaries on the use of their PHR and to provide them access to effective tools."

This month, CMS will launch the program in conjunction with four health plans to test the use of their PHRs. The plans are: HIP USA, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Each plan has a unique PHR tool that will be accessible to beneficiaries. The availability of different tools will provide valuable information to CMS on the various features offered, including which are most popular and useful to the individual.

The pilot is expected to run for eighteen months, and during this time 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;

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