Private health plans perspectives: electronic personal health records and electronic prescribing

Patients, payers, public health researchers, medical economists, and policymakers have all called for aggressive deployment of information technologies to support the management of health records and prescriptions. In response, payers of all types have been making investments in electronic systems.

To understand, analyze, and quantify current private payer involvement in electronic personal health records and electronic prescribing development and implementation.

A web-based survey involving 62 private commercial payer respondents representing more than 80 million covered lives and 16 national plans.

Responses showed relatively high rates of implementation of electronic personal health records among respondents (20 currently and 9 in the next 24 months), but a unanimity of agreement of disappointing plan members' utilization of these systems. Implementation rates of electronic prescribing systems are even higher. More than half of the respondents reported utilization rates below 10%.

The disappointing results with the implementations of electronic systems are most likely the result of variables exogenous to the technologies themselves. The low utilization of electronic prescribing is most likely related to the general lack of penetration of information technology into the work flow of most prescriber offices.