Colorado passes patient insurance-card bill

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter has signed a bill that would require insurers in the state to issue patient identification cards with both written information about the patient and insurer as well as machine-readable information on a magnetic strip. The legislation helps reduce the potential for human errors and the data entry burden posed by nonstandardized cards, and is an important step in reducing administrative complexity and its impact on healthcare costs, according to a release from the Medical Group Management Association.