The U.S Office of Personal Management (OPM) encourages the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) to increase their use of health IT. Currently there are 207 health plan choices in the FEHB program with about 8 million Federal employees, retirees, and family members covered.
The FEHB carriers were asked to make PHRs available, provide healthcare costs transparency, provide incentives for e-Prescribing, and to protect the privacy of individually identifiable health information. To report on how these goals are being accomplished, OPM issued their fifth report on FEHBP relating to HIT.
This program-wide “HIT and Transparency Report” is based on individual reports collected from health plans participating in FEHBP. The report shows that 92 percent of FEHBP health plans have taken proactive steps to educate their members on the value of HIT.
This year’s findings include:
• 97 percent of plans representing 98 percent of total FEHBP enrollment have PHRs available to their members
• Members using PHRs vary widely. Some plans report about 6 percent of members use PHRs while others indicate that all members use them
• 59 percent of plans report that they have online physician or hospital cost estimators or comparison tools on their websites
• 75 percent of plans report that they have online tools to compare physician or hospital quality
• 75 percent of plans report that their physicians can order prescriptions online
• 100 percent of FEHBP plans indicate that they provide members with access to privacy policies describing their compliance with HIPAA
Go to www.opm.gov/insure/health/reference/hitreport2011.pdf to view the “HIT and Transparency Report for 2011”.
