UnitedHealth Group is offering standard magnetic stripe patient ID cards to its enrollees. The Minneapolis-based health insurer expects to have nearly 25 million of the cards issued by the end of this year.
In making the announcement, UnitedHealth cited its support for the card standard developed by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange. The insurer first began experimenting with the cards five years ago, before the standard was developed.
Earlier this month, another payer, Louisville, Ky.-based Humana Inc., announced its support for Project SwipeIT, a new initiative of the Medical Group Management Association, Englewood Colo. That initiative calls for widespread use of standard patient ID cards by 2010.
More information on UnitedHealth’s effort is available at uhc.com. More information on Project SwipeIT
is available at swipeit.org.
--Howard Anderson
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