Kaiser, Anthem Launch Mobile App, Smartphone-Friendly Websites

You never know when you may need to find a doctor, urgent care center or hospital.

Being able to locate services that accept your health care insurance? Even better.

The County’s health insurance providers, Kaiser Permanente and Anthem Blue Cross, recently launched new mobile-friendly tools to help you do just that using smartphones.

Kaiser’s new app can be downloaded for free onto your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch through Apple’s App Store or onto your Android phones through Google Play.

The app allows Kaiser members to access their medical test results, email their doctor’s offices, schedule or cancel routine appointments and refill most prescriptions.

Also available now is Kaiser’s new secure, mobile-friendly member website, available through smartphone Internet browsers.

Anthem Blue Cross, meanwhile, also launched a mobile-compatible website. Anthem members can log on through their mobile devices and locate in-network doctors, urgent care centers and hospitals too. They can look up information about the doctors, automatically call the medical facilities or add the doctor or facility to their contact lists.

In a news release last month, Kaiser cited statistics from the Pew Internet Project showing that 40 percent of American adults access the Internet through mobile phones, and 25 percent of smart phone owners go online primarily through their phones. Of those, roughly one third have no high speed home broadband connections.

County employees can use their work-issued phones to access these tools. Rather than using personal accounts to download the apps, employees should set up a work account using their work email address. Credit card information shouldn’t be entered into work phones.

For more information, contact the Human Resources Department’s Benefits Division at 888-550-2203.