Dive Brief:

• EHRs may could pose a threat to the privacy of sensitive data for adolescents and their parents, an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests. 
• According to researchers who wrote the piece for JAMA's "Viewpoint," while physicians treat adolescents without the permission of patients and have separate paper medical records for treatment details that adolescents do not want to disclose to parents, EHRs aggregate data for all the treatment provided to patients within an integrated health system. 
• The JAMA Viewpoint recommends that health industry stakeholders take steps to address these concerns over confidentiality. 

Dive Insight:

While exposure of adolescents' protected health information hasn't been a problem yet, and Viewpoint co-author John Santelli said that the confidentiality of EHRs was still an "emerging" issue, it's still an important consideration—especially for those physicians who treat minors regularly. The implications for mental health providers, for example, seem particular sensitive. 

"Systems should be designed so that sensitive data from the adolescent are released to parents only after the adolescent consents," the authors wrote. "It is imperative to enunciate a clear standard of confidentiality that will protect both parents and adolescents."