Press Releases: Colorado
June 12, 2006
Convenient Online Health Care Now Offered to Kaiser Permanente Patients
DENVER – Kaiser Permanente patients now are able to e-mail their doctor and look up portions of their medical record online. By launching these new features, Kaiser Permanente extends online convenience to one in seven insured people in the Denver/Boulder area.
“Everyone is accustomed to shopping and banking online. It’s only natural that we be able to contact our physician and track our health online,” said Jack Cochran, MD, executive medical director for Kaiser Permanente. “Our patients now can see parts of their medical record and send a message to their physician’s team when they want."
Through Your Health Record on kp.org, members will be able to e-mail their physician’s office and get a response within one business day. They also will have 24/7 access to portions of their personal medical record including:
- Lab results
- Allergies
- Immunizations
- Past office visit information
These services are in addition to those already offered online, including appointment scheduling, prescription refills, health encyclopedias, and healthy lifestyle programs.
To access many of these features, Kaiser Permanente members first must establish a secure log-in at kp.org. This ensures that only the patient has access to his or her personal health information. To establish the secure log-in, members should go to members.kp.org, and click on “sign in” on the top navigation bar. Because it takes a few days to confirm this secure access, members are urged to establish their log-in right away, so they will be able to use the new online features when they need them.
As well as the added convenience, members receive an extra dose of safety with an electronic medical record. Computerized ordering has been shown to prevent adverse drug interactions, a common cause of hospitalizations.
It’s that commitment to improve patient safety that pushed Kaiser Permanente Colorado to eliminate paper charting more than 10 years ago. A system upgrade last year paved the way for Your Health Record on kp.org. Kaiser Permanente has budgeted $3 billion over 10 years to create electronic medical records for all of its more than 8.2 million members. This online transition puts Kaiser Permanente at the forefront of the health care industry’s effort to meet the federal government’s challenge to make electronic medical records the standard in the next decade.
Your Health Record on kp.org is available only to Kaiser Permanente members who see one of our 800 on-staff physicians in the Denver/Boulder area.
About Kaiser Permanente Colorado
The Colorado Permanente Medical Group has an exclusive contract with Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Colorado to form Kaiser Permanente Colorado, the state's largest private, non-profit health care provider in the state. CPMG is Colorado's largest medical group practice within a health care organization, and employs 800 regular status physicians representing all medical specialties and major sub-specialties. More than 483,000 members in the Denver/Boulder and Colorado Springs areas have access to Kaiser Permanente care through an expanded suite of health care products. Kaiser Permanente physicians and care teams focus on prevention as well as managing disease, all in an effort to help patients live well and thrive. Visit us online at kp.org or get the latest in health news at our News Center.