New features allow users access to expanded personal health data at TRICARE Online

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A new feature on TRICARE Online at www.tricareonline.com now allows users access to expanded personal health data, including lab results, patient history and diagnoses, and provider visits.

These features are an expansion of the current Blue Button capability, which already allowed beneficiaries to safely and securely access and print or save their demographic information, allergy and medication profiles. The Blue Button features will further encourage beneficiaries to actively engage in their health care. The level of data available will be dependent 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 Rear Adm. Christine Hunter, TRICARE Management Activity's deputy director. "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 was made generally available by other federal health care providers in 2010. It is the result of a close interagency partnership between the Department of Defense, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Blue Button already has over 250,000 users.

"Innovations like the Blue Button are great examples of how healthcare 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, the VA chief of staff. "TRICARE has raised the bar on what can be accomplished when our agencies work closely together."

"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 for health affairs. "We could not have accomplished this without the continuing strong collaboration between DOD and the VA."

TRICARE Online is the Military Health System's Internet point of entry that provides all 9.6 million TRICARE beneficiaries access to available healthcare 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.

To learn more, go to www.tricareonline.com or visit www.health.mil/mhscio. For more news about health IT news, subscribe to The Portal, the leading news source for military health IT at www.health.mil/mhscio.