Consumer are still not convinced about the safety of their E-Health records. Harris Interactive did a survey for Xerox they released in February that said 80% of people don’t trust electronic health records (EHR) yet because of data security concerns.
Xerox believes patients are worried about the safety of electronic health records primarily because the healthcare industry has done a poor job of educating the public. They also said if people understood how insecure paper records were, they would be less concerned about the push towards digital records.
18% of survey respondents said they had been approached by their healthcare providers to discuss how electronic health records affected them. This is going on despite the fact that healthcare reform and the compliance regulations that came along with it have been so thoroughly debated and discussed.
There are a number of benefits that can be derived from the use of electronic health records that are not being discussed commonly. Chief among them are the ones that can arise from improvements in the scientific method thanks to electronic record keeping.
As Lucian Mearian writes for Computerworld, “Evidence-based medicine involves best practices that use evidence gained via the scientific method for medical decision-making. One of the main reasons the federal government is pushing the rollout of EHR systems is to foster the use of evidence-based medicine by promoting the standardization of treatments.”
The better the electronic record keeping becomes, the more the practice will have a chance to foster the advancement of evidence-based medicine.
This subject remains highly controversial with consumers and the educational process is still in its infancy.
