CARIN Alliance

🚀 Kickoff: CARIN Digital Insurance Card Implementation Card 2.0.0 Considerations on September 12 at 10:00 AM ET. 🚀 This call is an opportunity for #implementers, #payers, #providers, #vendors, and the broader Health Level Seven International and CARIN Alliance community to discuss the proposed updates, share feedback, and shape the next version of the guide. The current STU 1.1.0 version of the CARIN Digital Health Insurance Card, leveraging SMART Health Cards and Links, allows individuals to: - Carry their health insurance cards in their digital wallets or print them, - Easily share insurance information with providers at check-in, and - Reduce the headaches of traditional plastic/paper cards. Why it matters: 1️⃣ Improved customer experience 2️⃣ More effective capture of insurance information 3️⃣ Reduced administrative burden, costs, and errors from manual entry 4️⃣ Reduced expense & environmental impact from printing/mailing plastic cards Today, Humana, UnitedHealthcare, and Epic already support more than 1.5 million live digital insurance cards. While the current STU 1.1.0 version represents an important first step, its scope is limited. To fully realize the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Health Technology Ecosystem vision, we must deliver significant updates, including: - Adoption of new data elements (priority on Medicare & Medicaid, plus vision, dental, enrollment, and more) - Alignment with newer version of US Core and reconciliation with Coverage profile - Use cases & integration narratives: - Real-Time Pharmacy Benefit Check (RTPBC) - #CARIN IG for Blue Button & #PatientAccessAPI - #USCDI alignment - International Patient Summary (#IPS) & global considerations (Canada, EU, others) - SMART Health Cards & Links IG STU 1.0.0 integration Your input is critical to ensure this guide continues to meet #patient and #industry needs while supporting #innovation, #patientaccess, #interoperability, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Health Technology Ecosystem vision. 📅 Kickoff Call: September 12 @ 10 AM ET 🔗 Get the agenda & join the call https://lnkd.in/eP82j-fm We hope to see you there and hear your feedback!

Thank you Aurene Wilford, Boyd Stewart, Adam Gale, and KLAS for the Peak award for our work on the CARIN IG for digital insurance card!! And thanks HIT Consultant Media for the write-up.

Over the past few weeks, there was a flurry of activity where everyone was posting their responses to the big CMS and ASTP RFI. We also posted our response on our NCPDP (National Council for Prescription Drug Programs, Inc.) LinkedIN page. But I didn't see many people post their response to the joint Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury; Employee Benefits Security Administration, Department of Labor; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Department of Health and Human Services RFI requesting feedback on price transparency and specifically the prescription drug machine-readable file disclosure requirements. Our members decided to send in a comment letter asking the question.. why use machine-readable files when we are have a real-time standard that can surface this information! The RFI asked for additional input on how to support a market-driven healthcare system by giving consumers the information they need to make informed decisions about their healthcare and healthcare purchases - specifically including prescription drugs so we decided to share what we are doing here at NCPDP and in collaboration with the CARIN Alliance and their consumer-facing transaction. Interested in learning more? You can read our response here! #patientacess #pricetransparency #pharmacyinteroperability #HealthIT https://lnkd.in/gwCt7Whs

🚨Congratulations to CARIN Alliance member Humana for seamlessly providing digital insurance information directly to consumers via Epic’s MyChart!! 🔹 Single Sign On ✅ 🔹 CARIN IG for Digital Insurance Card ✅ 🔹 CARIN IG for Blue Button ✅ Clinical and Payment information all in one place! Our dream! 👏🏼👏🏼 Fun fact from our recent CMS Connectathon: More than 1.5 MILLION digital insurance cards are in production today with more that 200,000 being sent to providers every single month!!! #ItsJustTheBeginning (Edit: We confirmed exactly what is being used with Humana for the nerds in the back. 😁 They are definitely using the CARIN IG for Digital Insurance Cards. We announced that together last year at HIMSS when they had just gone live. They are also using Availity 270/271 and SAML. Our hope is BB and IAL2 will follow soon but we are still excited!)

We are thrilled to share that the NCPDP Foundation has awarded the CARIN Alliance a grant to advance our Consumer-Facing Real‑Time Pharmacy Benefit Check implementation guide. This funding marks a pivotal moment in our mission to empower individuals with transparent, real-time insights into their prescription costs at the point of care. This grant supports our ongoing work to: 🔷 Expand adoption of the RTPBC implementation guide among software developers, payers, and pharmacy benefit managers 🔷 Streamline patient access to clear, actionable out-of-pocket cost information through the application of their choice 🔷 Enhance price transparency across healthcare touchpoints A heartfelt thank-you to the NCPDP Foundation for their trust and investment in our vision. Their support accelerates our progress in reducing surprise medication costs and building a patient-centered ecosystem. I also want to extend my gratitude to the CARIN Alliance members —your collaboration makes this impact possible. Stay tuned for upcoming updates as we roll out new resources, refine standards, and continue to improve access to real-time cost data for everyone. If you’re a developer, payer, PBM, or technology provider and want to join our RTPBC initiative, reach out to the Leavitt Partners team for more information.

In advance of our 10-year anniversary next year, we recently published a 20-page history of the major accomplishments we’ve had as a CARIN Alliance community including the background of many of the projects we have worked on together. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we’ve enjoyed working to unlock patient data for everyone in America. Most importantly, we want to thank so many of the people who have helped us along the way unlock health care data for consumers and their authorized caregivers to easily get, use, and share their digital health information where, where, and how they want to achieve their goals. (This is definitely not a comprehensive list) Thank you!! Aneesh Chopra David Blumenthal Michael Leavitt Karen DeSalvo Donald Rucker Micky Tripathi Steven Posnack Vince Ventimiglia Amy Gleason David Lee The Sequoia Project Dave Cassel Ricky Bloomfield Josh Mandel, MD Seema Verma Ryan Howells Pat Taylor Amol Vyas Corey Spears Mark Roberts Blake Hall Ashley Hudak DirectTrust Kantara Initiative CLEAR ID.me Max Templeton CommonWell Health Alliance athenahealth HIMSS Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Alexandra Mugge Deven McGraw Pooja Babbrah Frank McKinney b.well Connected Health Kristen Valdes Health Level Seven International

Excited to give a talk at the WEDI Spring Pre-Conference on May 14 @ 12 pm ET. I will delve into the latest updates on the CARIN Alliance Digital Insurance Card and SMART Health Cards and Links IGs. Discover how these initiatives are revolutionizing the way patients will manage and share their digital insurance information, offering a seamless and secure experience. For providers and payers, learn about the significant benefits including reduced administrative burdens, cost savings, and improved accuracy in insurance information capture. Don't miss this opportunity to stay ahead in the evolving landscape of digital health interoperability. #WEDI #Interoperability # #FHIR #HL7

This incredible demonstration at HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition with b.well Connected Health, CLEAR, CommonWell Health Alliance, and athenahealth represents one of the most significant breakthroughs I've seen in health care data exchange since the advent of Health Level Seven International's #FHIR #APIs. It's incredibly exciting and something the CARIN Alliance community has dreamed of seeing in production since 2017. 👏 When an individual (consumer, provider, or payer) can prove their digital identity once and federate that identity across a national network, we can then enable person-centric, trustworthy, consent-based data exchange at scale. It becomes a single sign-on for health care. This type of an approach is more trusted. . . more secure. . . more scalable . . . and more use case-driven than anything we have today. It's the basis for answering the key questions in health care data exchange at an individual level which are: 🔷 Are you who you say you are? 🔷 Who do you represent? (yourself or an organization) 🔷 What data are you authorized to have? With network effects and choice, the cost of these solutions will come down significantly for the entire ecosystem while still being free to all consumers. Let's do this everywhere. Who would like to test this approach in 2025? https://lnkd.in/eVKb8WyX

🚨🚨Congratulations to Karen DeSalvo and the entire Google team on the global launch of their open Medical Record APIs in Health Connect!!! These APIs enable apps to read and write medical record information to their own device in FHIR format. It’s privacy preserving and completely consumer consent based. With Health Connect, your data is stored locally on your device, and you’re in full control of which apps have access to your data and what kind of data is shared with those apps. This is exactly what we have been promoting in the CARIN Alliance for the last 9 years!! 👏🏼👏🏼 This is truly a full circle moment for us. In 2016, when she was the National Coordinator for the ONC, we worked closely with her to develop a vision and roadmap for how consumers can access more of their health information when, where, and how they want to achieve their goals. At the time, it seemed like an impossible dream. This dream has now become a reality for all consumers globally. We could not be more excited. Thank you Karen and the entire Google team for your work to help make this happen!! We look forward to seeing the ways the CARIN apps on https://lnkd.in/e9P8qujX will use these APIs to help make personal health record data available to Android consumers everywhere with their consent.