Americans consider the benefits of electronic health records to outweigh privacy risks, but also do not know much about the documents, according to a new study.
A survey initiated by Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente asked a group of 1,000 respondents 10 questions related to electronic health records.
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Electronic health records are digital accounts of a patient’s medical history. The survey found 57 percent of respondents had never read or heard anything about electronic records.
Respondents were rather evenly divided over what technique is more secure: 47 percent said paper records, while 42 percent chose computer-based (10 percent were unsure).
Despite this, 73 percent of respondents said they felt the benefits of electronic records trumped the potential risks.
“There’s kind of a dichotomy: You have people who are very familiar with using information technology in all aspects of their life, including health care, yet somehow we haven’t been good at getting the message out that electronic health records are very important,” said Dr. Louise Liang, senior vice president of quality and clinical systems support for Kaiser.
Liang said she believes the more people learn about electronic records — which she thinks are beneficial for better treatment in an emergency, savings in efficiency and costs, and reduced errors — the more people would want them.
But Joy Pritts, director of the Center of Medical Record Rights and Privacy at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute, considered some of the survey questions misleading. For example, Pritt said, the survey lists a number of benefits associated with electronic records, without noting the risks.
“I think that some of the answers they got are a bit optimistic,” Pritts said.
Risks revolving around electronic health records include errors being widely distributed, as well as the concept of medical identity theft, where individuals would use others’ records to get health insurance, she said.
