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Cerner to provide records for juvenile diabetics
Kansas City, Mo.-based Cerner Corp. will spend $25 million over 10 years to provide personal health records to up to 1.3 million children with juvenile diabetes, enabling them to connect with their physicians to transmit test results, improve care management and reduce physician visits and hospital admissions. Neal Patterson, chief executive officer and chairman of the board at Cerner, told Modern Healthcare today that the healthcare technology company is working with 12 children's hospitals, including Children's Hospital Boston, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics of Kansas City, to enroll children under 18 who have Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes. Patterson, who will announce the diabetes initiative on Tuesday at a national conference in Orlando, Fla., said pediatric endocrinologists and other physicians treating juvenile diabetes will enroll the patients through the host medical centers in the first phase. He said physicians already using a Cerner system would integrate the diabetes program into their daily work flow and those physicians not using a Cerner system will click onto a secure Web site to access the PHR. He said Cerner is speaking to payers about the need to reimburse for e-office visits and will advocate for that. -- by Mark Taylor