Feds Using Microsoft's HealthVault to Control Your Personal Health Record

SSA Links with Microsoft on Health Data Sharing

August 27, 2009

GHIT - The Social Security Administration is linking up with Microsoft to investigate ways that the software giant’s HealthVault personal health record could be used to speed the SSA’s disability benefits process.

A technical prototype linking the two organizations’ services is expected to be available later this year. The SSA said it will also collaborate with Microsoft on the study of current personal health records standards, and how any gaps in those standards could be bridged.

HealthVault is a free, online service that individuals can use to securely store and manage their health information, as well as to share that information with physicians and healthcare providers.

These kinds of personal health records contain essentially the same kind of data that the SSA gets from people to assess what disability benefits they need.

”Combined with other advancements in health information technology, our use of HealthVault should result in faster decisions for disability applicants,” said Michael Astrue, the SSA Commissioner.

The SSA published a request for information last November asking vendors and healthcare providers how a system could be set up to get information automatically from PHRs and electronic health records. Getting that information from providers now – from more than 15 million patient-authorized requests a year -- can take months and costs the SSA over $500 million a year.

SSA has been working since earlier last year with both the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and the Cleveland Clinic on pilot programs for doing just that. It’s also been working with two health information exchanges, the North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance and MedVirginia, on ways to use the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) for records retrieval.

SSA began electronically collecting medical data from MedVirginia in February. It posted a request for proposals Aug.7 to expand the number of healthcare organizations involved in its health records sharing program, with up to $24 million potentially available for resulting contracts.

Social Security Taps New Senior Health IT Official

April 20, 2010

GHIT - The Social Security Administration named James Winn, executive counselor to the commissioner, as special advisor for health IT. He takes over the position from Jim Borland, who oversaw the agency’s pioneering use of the nationwide health information network.

Borland will now become associate commissioner for electronic services and strategic information in the Office of Disability, Adjudication and Review, a new position he started April 19 to help advance modernization of SSA’s hearing process to reduce the backlog of disability claims, said William Martinez, deputy to the special advisor for health IT.

Winn became involved in health IT in helping form Data Use and Reciprocal Support Agreements (DURSA), HIE master agreements that smooth business participation in the NHIN. He has since participated in making agency decisions about health IT, Martinez said.

Winn also serves as SSA’s executive representative on the NHIN Coordinating Committee, the public/private body which governs the NHIN.

Borland lead SSA through its ground-breaking work in becoming the first federal agency to mount a production version of the NHIN. In that project it partnered with Richmond, Va.-based heath information exchange MedVirginia to transmit the electronic health records of disability applicants to SSA benefits officers, substantially accelerating the claims process.

In its venture with MedVirginia, SSA used the Connect software suite, an open source implementation of the NHIN developed by federal healthcare agencies. SSA’s Medical Evidence Gathering and Analysis through Health IT (MEGAHIT) system received, analyzed and processed the received data.

Jean McGraw, MedVirginia’s chief operating officer, said she was confident that the “strong relationship” with SSA will continue. In fact, MedVirginia is “in the process of bringing another major hospital system into the MEGAHIT program through the NHIN,” she said.

In February, SSA announced expanded the number of health information exchanges and providers with which to share data about patients who apply for disability benefits.

In February, SSA announced a set of contracts with 15 additional health information exchanges, providers and health IT firms to establish the application on a regional basis throughout the country.

Borland will maintain his membership on the Health IT Policy Committee, which advises the Health and Human Services Department on the adoption of meaningful use of electronic health records.