Abstract
Calls to action for widespread adoption of electronic health records have come from a broad spectrum of the private and public sectors. The problem, to date, is not that information does not exist, as much as that the data have not been organized around the patient. An integrated Personal Health Record is a patient-or family-centered technology designed to capture not only the contacts with health care providers, but also personal information on insurance, diet, and personal preferences that a physician's health record will not capture. Medical banking, based on a new technology platform called the Integrated Health Card, is emerging as a solution to the problem of collecting and combining information from the electronic health record with personal health information. It may also be the only way for fledging health savings accounts to enable the price and quality transparency of the medical market that has been called for repeatedly in this decade. In analyzing the political and patient applications of widespread adoption of this new innovation, the positive contributions to social welfare are very likely to outweigh the negative.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 41-50 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Business Economics |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2009 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Care Financing and Organization Initiative (HCFO) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. All interpretation of the results as well as methods employed to derive them are the sole responsibilities of the author. The author wishes to thank Brian Cooper, Lisa Tomai, Ruth Taylor, and Jessica Haupt for their insights.
Copyright:
Copyright 2012 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords
- consumer information
- consumer-driven health plans
- health insurance
- health savings accounts
- information technology
