The Veterans Affairs Department has set up a feature on its electronic patient portal that lets veterans download their personal health information into an electronic health record or other electronic media at the click of a button.
Starting this week, veterans have been able to click a "blue button" in the MyHealtheVet site and download records to their corresponding VA personal health record. They can then print out or save the data on a computer or flash drive in order to share it with healthcare providers. The records can include summaries of office visits, medication lists or lab results.
In early October, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will also launch a blue button feature on its Medicare site. CMS will offer the blue button on MyMedicare.gov patient portal so beneficiaries can download claims or medical information to secure Web site.
VA developed the blue button with CMS, the Defense Department and the Markle Foundation, a public interest group that works on health care policies. In an announcement today, Markle called for blue button access to be made available throughout the health care industry
"This capability is not common today, but we have the opportunity to make it a basic expectation"especially now that billions of public dollars will be flowing to help subsidize health information technology," said Dr. Carol Diamond, Markle's managing director, in a statement Aug. 31.
"Being able to have your own electronic copies and share them as you need to with your doctors is a first step in truly enabling people to engage in their health care," she said.
Markle also described the privacy policies and practices that should support the download function, such as authentication of the user, security safeguards and patient education about not storing their personal health information on shared computers.
