WASHINGTON report
Michigan Health
Information
Network Shared
Services, a
federally funded,
state-designated
entity, has taken
steps to support
the secure sharing of behavioral
health information. PCE Systems has signed
legal papers to
become a “
virtually qualified data
sharing organization” through the
network, called
MiHIN. This will
allow regional
HIEs in the state
to link their networks—through
MIHIN—to behavioral health and
substance abuse
treatment providers connected
to PCE’s data
exchange. The
Upper Peninsula
Health Information Exchange
will pilot the new
service; it covers
about 16,400
square miles with
more than 900
medical and ancillary providers.
HIEs Sharing
Behavioral
Data
of health care, where people can get answers to questions
that they couldn’t get anywhere else,” Pierce said, “then
you can see it taking off.”
The Queens storefront occupies 16,000 square feet in
a busy commercial district in the New York borough’s
Flushing section. Most of its 3,200 monthly visitors are
UnitedHealth members seeking help with private plans
or government-sponsored Medicare and Medicaid cover-
age, Law said. Customers can buy a medical plan, check
their blood pressure and plop the kids in front of the of-
fice’s Xbox while getting advice on doctors, healthy cook-
ing and drug interactions.
For Yun Yuen Chen, 73, a retiree enrolled in a UnitedHealth Medicare plan, the one-on-one attention she received recently at the storefront was well worth the time
spent, she said. Chen said she went there knowing it has
employees who speak Chinese to get help with a hospital
bill for her husband’s appendicitis.
“We got a bill that said we owed some money and we
wanted to make sure it was the money we were supposed
to be paying,” she said in an interview.
A few of the stores opened before the federal Affordable
Care Act, largely to cater to recipients of Medicare, the U. S.
health plan for the elderly and disabled. Still, the 2010 law
has been an added push, said Matt Fidler, the vice-president of consumerism and retail marketing at Pittsburgh-based Highmark. The act may expand coverage to more
than 30 million Americans, many buying for themselves
using online marketplaces set to debut later this year.
Employers such as Sears Holding Corp. have taken
similar steps, announcing they’ll shift workers to private
exchanges where they can select their own insurance and
Sears will help pay for it. The aging U.S. population also
means more Americans joining Medicare, which gives
seniors the option of choosing private plans run by companies like UnitedHealth or Louisville, Kentucky-based
Humana Inc.
“When you see a massive category shift like we’re go-
ing to see with reform, the first movers, the first ones out
of the gate, they are the ones deemed the most knowl-
edgeable and credible,” Fidler said in a telephone inter-
view. “We want to be the one people recommend to their
WAYNE MEMorIAL HoSPItAL IN HoNESdALE,
Pa., issued a public notice in late January of a
major breach of protected health information.
