The Blue Button Nation?
By
Bob Brewin
Program providing easy access to personal health records is popular with vets.
The Veterans Affairs Department’s Blue Button program to allow vets to easily access and download their personal health record continues to gain fans inside the veteran community and outside as well, Roger Baker, the VA chief information officer, told a media briefing Wednesday.
More than 500,000 vets have signed up to access their health care information through Blue Button, which launched in 2010. The Defense Department has made military employment history available through the program and the Office of Personnel Management will require all health insurance carriers in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program to use it in 2013, Baker said.
That requirement should be easy to satisfy, Baker said, as the largest insurance carriers in the country -- including Aetna, United Heath and Blue Cross/Blue Shield -- have decided to go Blue, as well as 250,000 private sector doctors, Baker said.
Federal Chief Technology Officer Todd Park gave the Blue Button (trademarked by the VA) its biggest boost Wednesday as one of the five projects in the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, which will seek out some real smart folks to develop apps for the initiative.
Or, to quote Park, he’s looking for some “badass innovators” to help everyone in the country -- not just vets or feds -- easily access their personal health records.