Medicare Blog

what is medicare blue button

by Janessa Kling Published 2 years ago Updated 1 year ago
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The Medicare Blue Button allows beneficiaries to access Part A, Part B, and Part D claims information and more at the touch of a button on your personal device. Medicare Blue Button allows patients the convenience to access their personal health information whenever and wherever they wish.

This optional service, called Blue Button, is secure, reliable, and easy to use. By linking your data to apps authorized by Medicare, you can: Access and share all your Part A (Hospital Insurance), Part B (Medical Insurance), and Part D (Medicare drug plan) claims with doctors and others you choose.

Full Answer

What is the Blue Button from CMS?

Share your Medicare claims (Medicare's Blue Button) You can download your Medicare claims data to your computer or device to print it or share it with others. You can also easily share your data with doctors, pharmacies, caregivers, or others you choose by linking to web applications (apps). This optional service, called Blue Button, is secure, reliable, and easy to use.

What is the Blue Button API for Medicare?

Apr 08, 2019 · The Blue Button symbol signifies that an organization has a way for you to access your health records electronically so you can: Share them with your doctor or trusted family members or caregivers Check to make sure the information, such as your medication list, is accurate and complete Keep track of when your child had his/her last vaccination

What does the Blue Button mean on my health records?

Jan 24, 2022 · The Medicare Blue Button allows beneficiaries to access Part A, Part B, and Part D claims information and more at the touch of a button on your personal device. Medicare Blue Button allows patients the convenience to access their personal health information whenever and wherever they wish.

What is blue button and is it secure?

What is Blue Button? Blue Button 2.0 is a standards-based application programming interface (API) that delivers Medicare Part A, B, and D data for over 60 million people with Medicare. This data reveals a variety of information about a beneficiary’s health, including type of Medicare coverage, drug prescriptions, primary care treatment and cost. Beneficiaries also have full …

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What are the benefits of Blue Button 2.0 for clinical care?

Blue Button 2.0 has the potential to change the ways beneficiaries engage with health information, making it possible to aggregate and share health information with multiple health care providers via an application that helps them better organize, understand and act on their health data.Mar 3, 2022

What does blue button mean?

“Blue Button” is shorthand for a movement toward an improved healthcare system in which patients and providers use information technology to collaborate and improve health.Oct 15, 2018

How do you get the blue button?

How do I use Blue Button?Login to your My HealtheVet account.Select Download My Data from the Home Page.You can then view, print or download your personal health information using the VA Blue Button.

What is a blue button project?

The Blue Button Connector was launched by the Department of Health and Human Services at a conference in Orlando, Florida, in 2014. It is a website that helps patients and consumers reach their own health information electronically and helps developers to build tools to respond to market needs and readiness.Apr 1, 2015

Who uses Blue Button?

Veterans who are VA patients and have a Premium My HealtheVet account can use the VA Blue Button feature to manage their health care as patients in VA medical facilities. This can include both self-entered information and data from the VA Electronic Health Record.

What does a Blue Button look like?

The Blue Button is superficially similar to a jellyfish but is more similar to the Portuguese Man O' War which is a Siphonophore (also a colony of polyps). The Blue Button species can be found floating ashore the Gulf of Mexico (and found here along 30A) and in other parts of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans.May 8, 2021

What is a single blue button?

The Blue Button symbol signifies that an organization has a way for you to access your health records electronically so you can: Share them with your doctor or trusted family members or caregivers.Apr 8, 2019

What is the blue button pledge?

The Blue Button Pledge was created to catalyze and support organizations that enable individuals to have access to and use their health information to be empowered partners in their health and health care.Jan 29, 2019

What is Carin IG for blue button?

The first is the CARIN IG for Blue Button® which is focused on providing claims information, including the adjudication information, in the form of a FHIR EOB. The second solution is to provide all payer information related to the clinical condition and care of the patient using US Core profiles on FHIR R4 resources.

How do I upload documents to Healthevet?

How can I attach a file to a Secure Message?Select the Add Attachment link on a new Secure Message or on a Secure Message that you are replying to.Select the file you would like to attach.Select the Attach button.

What is Medicare case mix index?

The Case Mix Index (CMI) is the average relative DRG weight of a hospital's inpatient discharges, calculated by summing the Medicare Severity-Diagnosis Related Group (MS-DRG) weight for each discharge and dividing the total by the number of discharges.Aug 2, 2021

What does Macra stand for?

Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) is a bipartisan legislation signed into law on April 16, 2015.Apr 1, 2022

How to access health records?

Health information about you may be stored in many places, such as doctors’ offices, hospitals, drug stores, and health insurance companies. The Blue Button symbol signifies that an organization has a way for you to access your health records electronically so you can: 1 Share them with your doctor or trusted family members or caregivers 2 Check to make sure the information, such as your medication list, is accurate and complete 3 Keep track of when your child had his/her last vaccination 4 Have your medical history available in case of emergency, when traveling, seeking a second opinion, or switching health insurance companies 5 Plug your health information into apps and tools that help you set and reach personalized health goals.

Where is health information stored?

Health information about you may be stored in many places, such as doctors’ offices, hospitals, drug stores, and health insurance companies . The Blue Button symbol signifies that an organization has a way for you to access your health records electronically so you can:

How long does Medicare cover?

That information now covers three years ...

What is the Blue Button 2.0?

The mission of the Blue Button 2.0 project is to enhance CMS’ current Blue Button service to provide a developer-friendly, standards-based data Application Programming Interface (API) that enables beneficiaries to connect their Medicare claims data to the applications, services, and research programs they trust.

Why is data important in healthcare?

As digital health care evolves, data becomes an important resource that patients can use to improve health outcomes for themselves, and as part of research groups. This drives the need for easier data interoperability.

Who owns the blue button?

Blue Button, the slogan, ‘Download My Data,’ the Blue Button Logo, and the Blue Button Combined Logo are registered service marks owned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Overview & Brief History of Blue Button

Blue Button is an initiative established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Veteran’s Administration (VA) in 2010. The original program laid the groundwork for Blue Button 2.0 as we know it today.

The Technical Specifics

Today’s Blue Button API allows for developers to register a beneficiary-facing application that allows beneficiaries to grant applications access to four years of their claims history. The Blue Button API uses the HL7 FHIR standard (v4) for beneficiary data and the OAuth 2.0 standard for beneficiary authorization. 1

Blue Button Programs

As mentioned above, there are several key CMS programs that are grounded on the Blue Button movement.

The Bigger Picture

Health systems are pursuing “Blue Button” services in order to strengthen patient trust, improve care coordination, and build a new Health Information Exchange (HIE) pathway built upon consumer-directed exchange (outside of HIPAA).

Blue Button Processing

While there are slight differences in the workflow for each of the Blue Button programs, below is an example workflow (DPC).

How CareJourney Can Help

Reach out to CareJourney for more information on how we can assist you in your Blue Button needs. Once up and running, CareJourney also offers data processing and analytics to members with Blue Button 2.0 data.

Blue Button 2.0 Implementation Guide

This is the current version of the Blue Button FHIR Implementation Guide.

Introduction

Blue Button 2.0 from CMS is an API that contains four years of Medicare Part A, B and D data for 53 million Medicare beneficiaries. This data reveals a variety of information about a beneficiary’s health, including type of Medicare coverage, drug prescriptions, primary care treatment and cost.

FHIR Data Model

We have mapped over 1,300 fields from the CMS claims data warehouse into FHIR. These fields are surfaced across the Patient, Coverage and Explanation of Benefits FHIR resources. The Blue Button API FHIR data model leverages coding systems specific to Medicare billing forms and/or the Chronic Conditions Warehouse, FHIR and Industry Coding Systems.

Blue Button Profiles

The list of Blue Button Profiles is shown below. Each profile defines the minimum mandatory elements, extensions and terminology requirements that MUST be present. For each profile requirements and guidance are given in a simple narrative summary.

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Mission

Background

  • The Blue Button service was established in 2010 as a joint effort of CMS and the Veteran’s Administration. Since that time, Blue Button has been used by more than one million beneficiaries to download their CMS information via the MyMedicare.gov portal. The current text and PDF downloadable files, while relatively easy to read, become challenging w...
See more on cms.gov

Additional References

  • The following webpages provide additional information and context for the CMS Blue Button® API. HL7® FHIR®Health Level Seven's Fast Health Interoperable Resources (FHIR) RESTful API resource OAuth 2.0Information about OAuth 2.0, the industry-standard protocol for authorization. SMART on FHIRSMART on FHIR is a set of open specifications to integrate apps with Electronic …
See more on cms.gov

Publications and Presentations

  • Are Federal Health Initiatives on FHIR?
    HL7’s Fast Health Interoperability Resource (FHIR) framework has caught the imagination of developers by offering a developer-friendly Application Programming Interface (API) and a rich set of simple, but flexible standard data formats… [read moreon the HHS IDEA LAB Blog ]
  • Trusting Health APIs
    Trust is the basis for all interactions in the health care world. One big challenge is to create trust without becoming intrusive or limiting. This issue of trust has been a critical component as we design the next generation of Blue Button service for Medicare beneficiaries… [read moreon the …
See more on cms.gov

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