Kaiser Permanente Expands Electronic Medical Record System

Main Category: IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 08 Aug 2006 - 0:00 PDT

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As part of a new movement towards cutting- edge online access, members of Kaiser Permanente of Georgia can now access portions of their medical records online at kp.org.

Kaiser Permanente is the first Georgia HMO to offer such a service, which debuted Saturday, August 5, at the Kaiser Permanente medical facility in Gwinnett County.

"Our members requested the service," said Luke Webster, MD, physician lead for Kaiser Permanente's member online access project team. "Kaiser Permanente is ahead of the curve since the government mandated that all patients must have online access to their records by 2010. It's just another benefit of being a Kaiser Permanente member."

In a recent study conducted by Chicago-based market research firm Synovate, for Kaiser Permanente, most Americans said their top healthcare preferences were accessing their medical records and scheduling medical appointments online.

Kaiser Permanente is incorporating these features and others. Members in Georgia can now e-mail their doctor's office with questions, view lab test results and review past office visit information online at their convenience. They also can view or cancel future appointments.

Kaiser Permanente has an aggressive online strategy and plans to add future services online such as scheduling appointments, viewing immunization and allergy records. Members can also set up reminders for preventive care screenings (mammograms, annual physical, etc.).

"Online services are a part of our commitment to offering the best possible customer service to our members," Dr. Webster said. "We think the addition of these services helps us remain an industry leader in health care."

Kaiser Permanente began converting its 12 metro Atlanta facilities to EMR in the past year. Georgia was the seventh state to install EMR within Kaiser Permanente's healthcare system.

Kaiser Permanente was one of the first in the Unites States to implement EMR in 2003. It's in the final stages of rolling out the program to its more than 8.5 million members nationwide.

With EMR, Kaiser Permanente doctors can instantly get critical health information about their members. In addition to saving time and money, it can save lives. The EMR system automatically flags abnormal test results and dangerous drug interactions, since member records are all in one online space at kp.org.

Because of EMR, Kaiser Permanente was first to discover the Vioxx problem, which helped Merck voluntarily pull the drug from store shelves while it researched the situation.

Kaiser Permanente members already can refill prescriptions online, get medical information on more than 40,000 health topics, use health calculators to determine things such as pregnancy due dates and talk to and receive support from other members about common health concerns in chat rooms and on message boards.

About Kaiser Permanente:

Headquartered in Oakland, California, Kaiser Permanente is the nation's largest not-for-profit health plan, with more than eight million members in Northern and Southern California, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Georgia, Ohio and the Mid-Atlantic states.

Kaiser Permanente of Georgia is the state's largest non-profit health plan, providing health care services to approximately 268,000 members through 12 medical locations in metro Atlanta and a network of affiliated hospitals and physicians.

Kaiser Permanente
http://kp.org/