Wal-Mart is offering some of its employees personal health records using technology from WebMD Health and Dossia, an employer coalition, Health Data Management reports. Wal-Mart is one of eight companies involved in Dossia.
Employees who qualify through health insurance through Wal-Mart are eligible for the program.
Under the project, Dossia will collect information from various sources about employees' health care.
Initially, employees' PHRs will include claims data from health plans and pharmacies, Colin Evans, president of Dossia, said. He added that eventually the employer coalition will make arrangements to collect clinical data from health care providers' electronic health record systems. Employees also will be able to enter additional information about their conditions or medical history.
Patients will be able to determine which health care providers can access certain data. In addition, the PHRs will provide employees with educational materials related to their health conditions.
Evans noted that Dossia plans to work with multiple PHR application vendors so employees are not required to use a certain application.
After the launch of Wal-Mart's PHR project, other Dossia members will launch their own PHR efforts.
The other Dossia members are:
- Applied Materials;
- AT&T;
- BP America;
- Cardinal Health;
- Intel;
- Pitney Bowes; and
- Sanofi-Aventis.
Each Dossia member is providing $1.5 million in start-up funding and will pay annual transaction fees for each employee (Health Data Management, 10/1).