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Introducing MiCare: Take command of your health

  • Published
  • By Col. Hans Ritschard
  • 90th Medical Group commander
Wouldn't it be nice to talk about your health with your healthcare team without having to make an appointment or visit the clinic? How convenient would it be to request a prescription refill or check your lab test results without having to book an appointment, or to wait for your doctor to call you back? What if you had instant access to reliable, comprehensive healthcare information about your symptoms, without having to call the clinic appointment line, or even better, to interact directly with your child's healthcare team?

Now, with MiCare, the Military Health System's new secure messaging system, patients can readily access their health information and interact with their healthcare providers, without the hassles of visiting the clinic.

The 90th Medical Group staff is pleased to announce that all patients enrolled to the clinic, except those in the Personnel Reliability Program, are now able to enroll in MiCare. Although similar to email, MiCare is much more secure. It allows patients to communicate with their healthcare teams, using an electronic forum that is fully secure and protected under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

MiCare fully satisfies all HIPAA regulations and allows patients to request appointments or medication renewals, receive medical test and lab results, communicate directly about their non-urgent symptoms, request copies of immunization records and access a large library of patient education materials. From the clinic, patients will receive messages directly from their medical teams, responses to their own inquiries and reminder messages about appointments.

Registration

Starting Aug. 6, patients can enroll in MiCare by visiting the Family Health Clinic in the 90th MDG.

To ensure the security of identifying sensitive information, which is not stored in MiCare, patients are required to fill out a registration card and show their ID to the clinic in person. Patients will receive unique log-in names and passwords to allow access to a personal MiCare account. Once a patient has completed the registration in person, RelayHealth, the MiCare vendor, will send an email confirming registration and guiding additional steps to complete the registration process.

Enrolled patients will have access only to their own personal healthcare information pages, and only the patients and their healthcare teams will have access to secure messages generated using MiCare.

Additionally, MiCare allows parents to enroll their dependent minor children under one of the parent's accounts, and those dependents 18 or older to establish their own accounts.

To register children under a parent account, the registration process will require parents to know the names of their children's primary care manager or managers so children can be linked to their medical home team.

"As a pediatrician, I often wished I could email parents to check-in on their kids, or to follow-up on their illnesses, ADHD meds, mood during parent deployments, breast-feeding, etc.," said Maj. (Dr.) Elizabeth Somsel, 90th MDG Medical Staff chief and pediatrician. "Now, we finally have that option!"


All 90th MDG patients are encouraged to sign up now for MiCare by visiting the Family Health Clinic reception desk in the clinic. Registration will require a military ID and just a few minutes of time. Additional information about MiCare is available from http://www.afms.af.mil/micare. Take command of your health and register for MiCare!