| By John Perry
Blue Access® for Members, accessed through the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas Web site at www.bcbstx.com, is your free, personalized online guide for making smart choices about your health-care coverage.
It’s a health resource right at your fingertips. With it you can:
• Use the Mayo Clinic’s online self-help and health information guide.
• Take a health risk assessment.
• Learn about treatment options for more than 250 health conditions.
• Compare hospitals, based on issues important to your specific needs.
• Test your knowledge of health topics with interactive quizzes.
• Locate a doctor or hospital in the network.
• Set goals to track progress towards healthy weight, smoking cessation or other self-care health programs.
• Request a new or replacement ID card or print a temporary card.
• Check the status of your claim.
• Confirm dependents.
• Print an explanation of benefits for the PPO plan.
Get started:
1. Log on to www.bcbstx.com.
2. Look for “Blue Access for Members” on the left side of the screen.
3. Look for prompt “New User?” under the “Log in” button. (If logging on at work, use your work e-mail address and you’ll be confirmed within a few seconds.)
4. Click on “Sign up” on the right side of “New User?”
5. Follow the on screen instructions in steps 1 through 4 to complete signing up.
Easy, isn’t it?
What you’ll need to know:
• Subscriber: Probably you. The employee or retiree who has elected medical coverage from the city of Houston’s health plan.
• Group number: the six-digit code (five numbers and the letter G) in the middle of the right-hand side of your HMO Blue Texas ID card.
• ID / Subscriber no.: the 12-digit combination of letters and numbers appearing on the left-hand side of the ID card under the member’s name.
Now that you’ve registered and agreed to certain terms, you can climb aboard and test drive the cyber highway to health information empowerment. First stop: the world-famous Mayo Clinic.
Don’t “pass the Mayo,” visit the Mayo
Get state-of-the-science health, medical and self-improvement news and information from the award-winning consumer Web site of the Mayo Clinic.
Click on the My Health prompt. Under My Health Highlights, click on the three-shield symbol of MAYO CLINIC. It takes you to the Mayo Clinic home page. Once there, you’ll find interesting health-management options.
Take the HRA now
You’ll be welcomed to the Mayo Clinic’s health risk assessment page. This is a good place to start your individualized self-health assessment.
Your HRA can discover risk factors you may not realize you have. It also reinforces the healthy choices you’re already making. Invest the time – you’ll really be investing in yourself.
The best health plan is when you plan to stay healthy. And the Mayo Clinic can help you do just that.
Could you be diabetic?
Read about the risk factors and warning signals. Go to the Mayo Clinic home page. Look on the upper left-hand side to find a disease or condition. You can select your topic by the first letter, like D for diabetes and find out about this disease.
In each issue of Benefits Pulse, a Blue Access feature will steer you in the right direction to find heathly information you can use.
So, don’t hang on the phone line. Go online. Get registered, get connected, get informed and get with it. It’s all free through the city’s health plans and HMO Blue Texas.
|
