Now here’s an interesting spin… Malpractice insurer Northwest Physicians Insurance will be offering a rebate to physicians who adopt a PHR to facilitate patient-physician communication. Looks like this insurer predicts that if they can get the patient and physician to communicate more effectively to improve patient safety (and have an audit trail to prove it), [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Aetna’
An Interesting Marriage: Malpractice and PHRs
Posted in PHR, tagged Aetna, Cigna, e-Consult, Medem, PHR on March 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Business Case for Aetna’s SmartSource
Posted in PHR, tagged Aetna, PHR, SmartSource on March 12, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Pondering the previous post on Aetna’s announcement today regarding SmartSource, have come up with the following business arguments as to why Aetna is aggressively pursuing a consumer health engagement path. 1) Bring more value to the consumer/customer to get them to actually use their PHR. This is arguably the top reason as they have invested [...]
Aetna Keeps Pushing the Envelope
Posted in consumer health, Dossia, PHR, PHS, Privacy, tagged Aetna, Healthline, PHR, PHS, SmartSource, UnitedHealth, WellPoint on March 12, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Aetna is pretty aggressive on the personal healthcare front. First they buy ActiveHealth Management. Granted, ActiveHealth’s main target is not the consumer (disease management is their core competency), but they did introduce an online PHR early last year. Secondly, Aetna has partnered with all the major personal health systems (PHS) plays which include Dossia, Google [...]
HIMSS – Part Deux
Posted in consumer health, Google, Microsoft, PHR, PHS, tagged ActiveHealth, Aetna, Agfa, eHealth, Google, HIMSS, ICW, LifeSensor, Microsoft, nomoreclipboard, PHR, RelayHealth, Sun, WebMD on February 27, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Back home from my two day whirlwind tour of HIMSS. Here’s what I have for you from Day Two. Significantly slower on Tuesday, though it did pick up later in the afternoon. So was everyone out playing golf or hanging out by the pool before the rain set in, or were they at one of [...]
With Merger, Is WebMD Now in Play?
Posted in consumer health, Google, health portals, Microsoft, PHR, tagged Aetna, Cigna, GE, Google, Healtheon, Intuit, McKesson, Microsoft, Revolution, RevolutionHealth, Siemens, WebMD on February 21, 2008 | 4 Comments »
This morning, along with announcing very good 4th qtr growth at WebMD, a concurrent announcement was made that Healtheon and WebMD have agreed to merge, putting the value of the combined entity at about $2.3B. Due to the structure of the deal, WebMD will also end up with a hefty war chest estimated at $700M. [...]
The Painfully Slow Move to Online Services
Posted in consumer health, health portals, PHR, telemedicine, tagged Aetna, Cigna, Kaiser Permanente, Medem, Medicare, online, PHR on February 6, 2008 | 4 Comments »
This week, the LA Times has an interesting article on how major insurers Cigna and Aetna will be reimbursing physicians for providing online consultations. It is encouraging to see these major payers step-up and support such practices. Other payers will likely follow as this could become a key service differentiator that would be attractive not [...]
Marriott’s PHR Goes Live for 50,000
Posted in consumer health, PHR, Privacy, tagged ActiveHealth, Aetna, Marriott, PHR on January 29, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Hotel chain, Marriott, announced that they are now offering a PHR for their 50,000 employees. IT publication InformationWeek wrote a pretty good article covering Marriott’s plans and the Aetna owned ActiveHealth PHR that is being used. Article also provides a couple of interesting quotes from a physician. ActiveHealth CEO, Lonny Reisman is quoted claiming that [...]
Correction: AMA Article on PHRs
Posted in consumer health, PHP, PHR, tagged Aetna, AMA, Dossia, Google, Microsoft, PHP, PHR on December 11, 2007 | 1 Comment »
As physicians will play an extremely important role in the future adoption and use of personal health records (PHRs), educating physicians on this technology platform, where it is today and where it is heading, is critical. Unfortunately, it appeared that the AMA was not stepping up to play such an important educational role as a [...]
Moving the Ball Forward: PCHRI 2007
Posted in EHR, EMR, Google, health portals, HIE, Microsoft, PHP, PHR, policy, Privacy, Security, tagged Aetna, Children's Hospital CHIP, Dossia, Google, Indivo, Microsoft, pharmaceutical, PHP, PHR, WebMD on November 29, 2007 | 3 Comments »
The Children’s Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP), developers of Indivo, hosted PCHRI 2007, an invitation only conference over the last two days. The event brought together about 100 leading players in the Personal Health Record (PHR) market to discuss where the market is today, what challenges lie ahead, and what we might see in the future. [...]
Aetna Joins Cigna and Goes One Step Further
Posted in consumer health, P4P, policy, tagged Aetna, Cigna, healthcare, quality on November 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Aetna, under pressure from the New York Attorney General’s office, has agreed to change its physician quality ranking system. This follows a similar move by Cigna about two weeks ago. Both UnitedHealth and WellPoint BS/BC are the remaining hold-outs, but I expect them to follow suit in the near future. What is interesting about the [...]
