Amid the move by physicians and hospitals to adopt EHRs, patients remain concerned about the security of their personal health information. That's the high-level finding of an online survey conducted in early May among more than 2,700 U.S. adults by Harris Interactive on behalf of Xerox Corporation.
Xerox, a $22 billion business process and document management firm, released a summary of the survey findings on July 20.
According to the summary, nearly 80 percent of respondents who have concerns about digital medical records indicated stolen personal information by a computer hacker to be their No. 1 worry; followed by the threat of lost, damaged or corrupted records at 64 percent; and the misuse of information at 62 percent.
"The survey results indicate an urgent need for better patient-provider communication," said Paul Solverson, partner, strategic advisory services, at ACS, a Xerox company. "Providers need to start conveying the benefits of electronic records, particularly the security advantages over today's paper-based system."
And survey respondents are still unclear on how EHRs impact them. Only 18 percent (up just 2 percent from Xerox's 2010 survey) of U.S. adults who have a healthcare provider have been approached by their provider to discuss EHRs, the survey summary said.
At the same time, this year's survey found that more than half of U.S. adults familiar with the conversion of paper records to digital records (51 percent) believe that EHRs will result in better, more efficient care -- up from last year's survey when only 49 percent agreed.
Frank Irving blogs regularly at EHRWatch.com.
