Anthem, Humana along with Apple and Google testing API for patient access to claims data

While announcements from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and major tech giants took center stage at the Blue Button Developers Conference on Tuesday, another initiative was announced that could potentially have huge implications for patients getting easier access to their claims data.

The Carin Alliance, a private sector collaboration made up of major health insurers, providers, health IT companies and tech giants, announced at the conference that it has developed a data model and draft implementation guide to standardize claims data sharing with the aim of making medical claims data easier to access for patients.

The CARIN Blue Button data model and draft implementation guide, developed by a working group within the organization, includes more than 240 claim data elements that have been agreed on by multiple regional and national health plans, the organization said.

These data elements are included in a common payer consumer data set. The Carin Alliance said it has taken these data elements and mapped them to HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources to better assist health plans to implement the CMS interoperability and patient access proposed rule.

Read full article published in Fierce Healthcare.