Social security and healthcare cards

The origins of social security and healthcare cards 
 

Well before the emergence of national e-Government policy, the health and social security sectors in many countries undertook to drastically simplify the bureaucracy and extremely costly system of intermediary financing between citizens and public health and social security services.

From the end of the 1980s, many credit-card style insurance cards were introduced. The analysis of administrative circuits revealed that a direct relationship between the State and healthcare professionals, pharmacists and social security organizations would give these organizations a ‘front-office’ role in the healthcare or social security chain of finance. This would save two or three exchanges per transaction, multiplied hundreds of millions of times every year. The benefits for citizens, state and intermediaries would clearly be huge.

And it was on this principle of simplifying flows and setting up a central coordination hub to avoid duplication of information and where everyone could securely share the data relevant to their role in the social chain that in 1991, the “Banque Carrefour de la Sécurité Sociale” was created in Belgium.

The French equivalent, the SESAM-Vitale scheme within the health and social security network was also in development at the same time.
 

A few flagship examples of health and social security cards

Belgium Crossroads Bank for Social Security	France: SESAM-Vitale Card	Austria	Germany
Slovenia	Europe: European Health Insurance Card (EHIC)	Asia