BLUE SHIELD: Launches Online Messaging System
Blue Shield of California Saturday launched an online messaging network to facilitate communication between doctors and their patients, the San Francisco Business Times reports. According to Jeffrey Rideout, Blue Shield's chief medical officer, the messaging system will first be made available to a select group of "Internet-savvy" physicians, leaving some of the insurer's two million members waiting for online access to their doctors. Created by the Alameda-based Healinx Corp., the system will not be a proprietary product for Blue Shield. The first Web page accessed by patients using the program will be the physician's own site. Rideout hopes that physicians, other health plans and patients without insurance will take advantage of the messaging system (Robinson, 7/3).
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