New Social Security Project Entails $24 Million For Electronic Health Data Gathering
Posted on:8/13/2009
Written By: Chris Robideaux
| The Social Security Administration has announced the launching of a program that will collect comprehensive information regarding citizens' health histories and details, where pertains to those applying for disability benefits. |
The Social Security Administration has announced the launching of a program that will collect comprehensive information regarding citizens' health histories and details, where pertains to those applying for disability benefits. This program amounts to "data sharing" of private citizens' personal health records. The SSA is also handing out lucrative contracts--to the tune of $24 million--to those companies that can best facilitate an outsourcing of these electronic medical records, or EMRs, apparently available to any and all agencies that would want to have a look. Social Security has been testing the use of EMRs in the application process for about a year. In pilot programs with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and MedVirginia, a health information exchange in Virginia, the agency says it has significantly reduced processing time for those applications.
Now, Social Security is looking to expand that program. It wants to electronically collect disability applicants' clinical information--with patients' authorization--and apply a business rules engine to help it make benefits determinations, said Social Security officials at a webinar on Tuesday about the program.
Called the Medical Evidence Gathering and Analysis Through Health IT, the SSA of course maintains that in crises like ours, this is for the betterment of us all. I call it another step towards Brave New World-style communism. I guess the moral of this story is - don't get sick! Especially when officials have said they expect to receive more than 3.3 million applications for Social Security benefit in fiscal year 2010, a 27% increase over fiscal 2008.