You know how it is when you hear or learn of something for the first time and then all of a sudden this newly found thing suddenly appears before you ALL THE TIME?

For example, years ago I purchased a Mazda GLC (short for Great Little Car – cute marketing). My roommate had never heard of it before, but once he saw it – and he thought it was, indeed, a great little car), he kept telling me over and over and over and over how often he now saw GLCs on the road.

They’d been around for some time but he’d never "seen" them before. His roommate – me – gets one and then, whammo! GLCs are everywhere.

Same thing with personal health records now. Not that my former roommate has called me out of the blue to tell me he, too, has started putting together his own personal health record.

No, this time it’s me. PHRs have been around a long time – years – but I only recently came to know about them.

And now they are everywhere.

In fact, according to a story that appeared October 24 in the Pittsburgh Business Times (and republished online at healthdecisions.org:

Starting in January, Aetna will roll out an electronic personal health record for its members, a tool designed to lower health care costs by encouraging preventive care and catching health problems early. Highmark Inc., too, is planning to introduce a similar tool next year.

Aetna believes offering PHRs to its members will save the insurer plenty of moola. Or, put in language that accountants love:

In a study of 39,462 people, the software saved $8.07 per month for each member in claims and resulted in 8.4 percent fewer hospitalizations when compared with members who did not use the program.

Although such programs are inexpensive to run, the value is still being evaluated, according to Dr. Don Fetterolf, corporate vice president at Matria Healthcare Inc., a health promotion consultant based in Marietta, Ga. The issue is getting members to use the program, and more importantly, changing behavior, to hold down costs, he said.

But what really caught my eye was this tidbit in the final paragraph:

Fetterolf predicted that such programs will continue to proliferate, even though questions remain about how many people will actually use them. "It’s the buzz," said Fetterolf.

I boldfaced that last sentence: "It’s the buzz."

So if personal health records are all "the buzz," I guess this means but one thing – the gossip tabloid magazine Star will soon will feature a headline like this:

                   "Brad Pitt Starts PHR for Maddox; Angie Swoons with Joy"