Friday, May 11, 2007

The Verizon PHR - Modern Healthcare Online

The Verizon PHR - Modern Healthcare Online: "Verizon Communications Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ivan Seidenberg said on Wednesday that the company has implemented an electronic personal health-record system for its more than 900,000 active employees, retirees and their families. Called Verizon HealthZone PHR, the system works in conjunction with WebMD to allow individuals to store personalized health information on a password-protected Web site, he said. 'We think this kind of a simple connection creates enormous consumer power to drive change across the system,' Seidenberg said.

In Washington yesterday for a panel discussion that featured government and private-sector leaders, Seidenberg said Verizon's healthcare tab was about $3.5 billion last year, and, overall, about 90% of those transactions happen hand-to-hand via phone or by fax.

'We come at this from the whole idea of what can we do to help support the infrastructure for health distribution processes,' he said. 'We think a healthy introduction of health IT will help.' Seidenberg, who sat on the President Bush's Commission on Systemic Interoperability, said that health IT ultimately will increase the efficiency of healthcare delivery and make the industry more responsive to consumers' and providers' needs."

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