Dive Brief:
- A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that electronic health records can be used to validate health insurance coverage in real time.
- According to the study authors, this ability can also help with benefit retention.
- Although health insurance is now more readily available to more Americans, due in part to the Affordable Care Act, benefits can lapse if people don't keep track of their coverage and fail to renew it.
Dive Insight:
"Given that insurance significantly predicts healthcare utilization and outcomes, assistance with coverage enrollment and retention could be a potentially crucial service for clinics to provide and could be facilitated by data and tools from the EHR," the study authors said. "Building tracking systems to improve insurance coverage is arguably as (or more) important to patients' health as systems to improve blood pressure and lipid levels. Our study presents validation for using the EHR as a source of health insurance information, and suggests that confidence in this information is possible."