A key reason why 40 million Americans don't have medical insurance and why employers have dropped offering medical benefit plans at work is they must buy coverage for health-care procedures they don't use.

"Anything that helps people tailor benefits and use to the individual is an improvement in the system," Leavitt said, noting that the era of people being buffered from the real cost and course of their own care is ending.

Almost every state economic forecast regarding health care by both private business and government agencies show that if the system isn't drastically altered and soon, the price of insurance premiums alone will equal the average household income in Utah by 2020.

The situation is simply unsustainable and broad-based adjustments have to be made, Leavitt said. But changes down to each and every individual have to be made if any systemic adjustments are going to have any significant and long-term effect.

That's why a personal health record under the control of the consumer or patient matters. They may be able to authorize links to other personal electronic information such as pharmacy data, which CMS hopes will be made easier and literally more legible under a change announced two weeks ago to allow doctors to prescribe medications electronically for Medicaid and Medicare patients.

Personal health records would offer links to tools that help consumers manage their health such as wellness programs for tracking diet and exercise, medical devices, health education information and applications to detect potential medication interactions.

Personal health records vendors who want more information about the pilot program can visit www.NoridianMedicare.com/phr/, or they can send an e-mail to solicitation@medicarephr.org.

---

E-mail: jthalman@desnews.com