Dive Brief:
- New research has concluded that some patients hold back information from their providers due to privacy and security concerns related to EMR use.
- The study, which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, examined a nationally-representative sample from the 2012 Health Information National Trend Survey to determine whether use of EMRs led to patient withholding info from providers.
- According to the analysis, 13% of survey respondents said they'd withheld information from a provider out of privacy or security worries.
Dive Insight:
Given that EMRs' core purpose is to enhance the sharing of information between providers, patients, payers and government, the idea that they may be undercutting such sharing is troubling. The notion that EMRs may contain excerpts of patients' history and complaints rather than their complete records devalues the data for diagnostic purposes and raises questions as to how reliable it is. Partially-shared patient information is also less useful to other providers who might receive it.
To combat this issue, researchers said, providers should consider how EMRs could impact patient disclosure of personal information, discuss EMR benefits with patients and air out privacy and security concerns. The better patients understand carefully thought-out EMR privacy and security measures, the less likely they are to balk at their use.