Managed Care - March 2008 - (Page 10) NEWS AND COMMENTARY scriptions, say the authors, and the cost could be a barrier to medication adherence, although the authors emphasize that patient outcomes were not included in the research. The authors concluded that policies in which people pay directly for their drugs are less likely to cause harm if only non-essential drugs are included in these policies or exemptions are built into the policies to ensure that people receive needed medical care. Headlines On Deadline The Cleveland Clinic has joined with the Internet giant Google to test a secure exchange of patient medical record data involving prescriptions, conditions, and allergies. The ex- change will occur between the patient’s electronic personal health record housed at the clinic and a secure Google profile that could be accessed, for instance, in a doctor’s office or a hospital. The ultimate goal of this experiment, in which the patient controls the flow of information, is to give patients the ability to interact with multiple physicians, health care providers, and pharmacies. . . . A regulation to establish patient safety organizations (PSOs) has been promoted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. PSOs are private entities that would collect and analyze patient safety events reported by health care providers. Under the proposal, a hospital could describe in detail how the wrong leg happened to be amputated without fear of being hit with a lawsuit (at least as a result of this exchange of information). Under the proposal, PSOs can collect, aggregate, and analyze data, and provide feedback to help providers and health care organizations improve health care quality. . . . America’s Health Insurance Plans is pushing a proposal with state insurance regulators that would give consumers the right to appeal policy rescissions based on an insurer finding out that the patient had a pre-existing condition that had not been disclosed during initial enrollment. The proposal would call for individual states to use independent panels of health care professionals and lawyers to review such cancellations. Details of how the process would function hadn’t been finalized, the group said at press time, so stay tuned. — Tony Berberabe Try Our New Digital Edition How to Use the Digital Edition To navigate through the issue, use the control bar at the top of the screen. Turn the pages as you would do with the print edition. To access more help click on the red question mark in the bar. Opens the Tools menu. View a list of all articles. Zoom in and out on the current page. Click the word “Zoom” to open the zoom configuration window. Switch to single-page view. Open the magnify window. Navigate to the previous or next page. Navigate to the cover or back page. Search the full text of the issue for a word or phrase. Print pages. Save an offline version to your computer. Save the direct link to an article to bookmark or email Wellness Care M A N A G E D FEBRUARY 2008 The digital edition of MANAGED CARE is now available. Readers see a complete copy of an issue on their computer screens, with the added ability to search through every single word in the issue. With the digital edition, you can: he s t ith .42 at’ W ? Wh blem bing Pro escri r E-P Now Part of the Corporate Dashboard Will Health Plans Get Their Share of the Business? PACKAGE INCLUDES: An Opportunity for Health Plans 24 You Will Live Healthily! 30 Major Employers Lead the Way 35 Legislators Urged to Reward Wellness 39 WWW.MANAGEDCAREMAG.COM You can receive Managed Care’s digital edition every month free by registering here: http://www.managedcaremag.com/digital SIGN UP NOW to receive an alert when each new issue is available: http://www.managedcaremag.com/digital • Click on any URL anywhere in the magazine and go directly to that Web page • Click on the title of any article on the cover or in the table of contents and go directly to that article • Search for any string of characters • Make and save notes with the article that you are reading • Instantly e-mail a link to any article to an associate • Get more information about advertised products by clicking on an ad • Save the magazine file to your desktop for offline reading • Print any or all pages 10 MANAGED CARE / MARCH 2008 http://www.managedcaremag.com/digital http://WWW.MANAGEDCAREMAG.COM http://www.managedcaremag.com/digital
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