Health Records Come to SSA

The Social Security Administration announced Thursday that it has entered into an agreement with Microsoft to test the use of its HealthVault application in the process of determining disability benefits. The technology, which allows applicants to gather, store and manage their families' heath information and share that information with their physicians and health care providers, contains the same types of information that Social Security generally obtains from people applying for disability benefits.

I've written a lot about how staffing shortages at SSA are impeding its efforts to decrease a significant backlog of disability cases. To me, implementing personal health records is not only critical for decreasing processing times for disability benefits, but also for helping SSA decrease the workload of current employees responsible for processing claims, especially given the recent uptick in claims due to the struggling economy.