A newly upgraded feature on TRICARE Online now allows users to access expanded personal health data, including lab results, patient histories and diagnoses, and provider visits.
These features expand the current Blue Button capability, which already allowed beneficiaries to, safely and securely, access and print or save their demographic information, and allergy or medication profiles. Available at www.tricareonline.com, the Blue Button features will further encourage beneficiaries to actively engage in their health care. The level of data available will depend on where treatment occurs, with the most data available to those who regularly get care at military hospitals and clinics.
“These new capabilities are a major step forward in engaging Military Health System patients as partners in their own health care,” said Navy Rear Adm. Christine Hunter, deputy director of TRICARE Management Activity. “Personal electronic health records can also improve care by conveying accurate patient information between providers, avoiding duplication of tests and reducing delays in treatment.”
The Blue Button was fielded by TRICARE and made generally available by other federal health care providers last year. It is the result of a close interagency partnership between the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. Blue Button already has more than 250,000 users.
“Innovations like the Blue Button are great examples of how health care information technology can keep institutions like TRICARE, CMS and VA on the vanguard of patient care by enabling safe, secure access to their electronic records,” said John Gingrich, chief of staff at VA. “TRICARE has raised the bar on what can be accomplished when our agencies work closely together.”
TRICARE Online is the Military Health System’s Internet point of entry that provides more than 9.6 million TRICARE beneficiaries with access to available health care services and information through an enterprise-wide secure portal. TOL users who receive their care at a military treatment facility can schedule appointments, order prescription refills and view their personal health data. Other TOL users with active prescriptions at a military pharmacy can also request a refill for those prescriptions.
“The Blue Button efforts are just another example of how DOD and VA are working together to shape the future of health care IT collaboration, interoperability and transparency for the patients and families we serve,” said Dr. George Peach Taylor, Jr., the acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs). “We could not have accomplished this without the continuing strong collaboration between DOD and the VA.”
To learn more, go to www.tricareonline.com or visit www.health.mil/mhscio.
By: TRICARE Management Activity