MiCare: Take command of your health care

  • Published
  • By Sara Vidoni
  • Team Eglin Public Affairs
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  When there is a medical need, communication between patients and providers is an essential part of effective health care, but often, making an appointment, sitting in a waiting room, filling out paperwork, all seems more cumbersome than it's worth. The goal of Eglin's secure messaging application, MiCare, is to alleviate that hassle.

MiCare is an online secure messaging application that can be used to communicate with your specific Eglin health care team. The messaging platform is built to facilitate safe, secure, online communication between provider and patient.

MiCare started here in 2012 and the 96th Medical Group currently has 9,267 beneficiaries subscribed to the service. As more and more people are turning to online services, the MDG hopes to increase their enrolled population to 30 percent by December.

"The beauty of MiCare is it can be accessed at anytime, anywhere," said 2nd Lt. Megan Howell, 96th MDG. "When you have a question for your health team, you just send an electronic message. The team will send you back a response as soon as possible. This alleviates the need to make a phone call and then wait by the phone to hear back from the nurse or doctor."

A patient can also receive their test and lab results, request medication renewals or a copy of their immunization record, book a future appointment and access a large library of patient education materials.

With a large populace here, MiCare is a tool to help streamline non-urgent inquires, thus freeing up providers to see more acute patients.

"By more people using MiCare for their health concerns instead of an office visit or even a phone call, we open up a lot more time for health teams to concentrate on meeting the needs of all patients when and how they need it," said Howell. "We have a very large beneficiary population and it's our goal to provide each person with the best service possible - MiCare makes managing that population more achievable."

Once enrolled in MiCare, the health care team can contact patients for a number of services including appointment reminders, follow ups, medication alerts, medical test and referral results and more.

"Right now we offer MiCare in all of the primary clinics including Family Health, Family Medicine Residency, Flight Medical, Internal Medicine and the Pediatric Clinic," said Howell.

The Disease Management Clinic and the Exceptional Family Member Program are currently being added to the MiCare service as well.

For those wishing to enroll in MiCare, enrollment specialists are available in each primary care clinic to assist patients in person. Those interested may also contact their health care team to learn more on how to get started.

"MiCare capabilities will allow our medical group staff to improve the overall level of service we provide to our patients," said Col. Gianna Zeh, 96th MDG commander. "MiCare is an important tool for our future communications between our patients and their medical home teams. We ask that you take charge of your health care and register for MiCare today."