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Giant health system in Pittsburgh plays the smart card

UPMC is taking the plastic data card out for an extended test drive as part of a multiyear, $500 million electronic records project.

By Tyler Chin, amednews staff. April 1, 2002.

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UPMC Health System is expanding its test of smart cards after an initial run proved successful.

The Pittsburgh-based system, which has 16 hospitals and a group of 450 doctors, earlier this year installed a smart-card reader at one of its emergency departments. Soon, it is scheduled to test smart cards for adjudicating the claims of patients who have flexible spending accounts, a process that would be completed while those patients are in the office. That should speed up payment for physicians and spare patients the hassles of collecting and filing receipts for reimbursement, said Scott Gilstrap, UPMC's project director for technology solutions.

UPMC, which sees the cards as a small component of a five-year, $500 million electronic medical records initiative, also will issue smart cards to as many as 5,000 additional patients. It issued cards in August 2001 to 300 patients to help streamline the patient registration process. Patient demographics, allergies, medications and other encrypted data are stored on a chip embedded in the plastic cards, which are the size of credit cards.

Those data are decrypted when the cards are swiped through a card reader. Patients also can review and print their data at the doctor's office, using a kiosk and a personal identification number. UPMC is testing the cards only with members of its HMO and its employed doctors, though it eventually hopes to issue the cards to all patients and affiliated physicians. [...]