Public Acceptance Stopped by Data Theft Fear of EHRs

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Electronic health records (EHRs) arenot gaining the acceptance and fear about the security of personaldata is at the head of the list. This is as it should be. Mostrecords are not as secure as claimed, contrary to informationtechnology (IT) assurances. Yes, patients are right to worry aboutthe theft of medical and personal information on electronic healthyrecords. Even though more than half of the nation's office-basedphysicians are using EHRs, a survey conducted by Harris Interactivefor Xerox found that 63% of American patients have a fear of hackersstealing their personal medical data.
About half of the USA population saysthey are worried that their digitized health data may be lost,damaged, or corrupted. They also worry that a power outage orcomputer crash could prevent their doctor from accessing their chartduring an appointment. The survey shows that the anxiety aboutdigitized health records has increased over the years as more recordsare converted from paper to computers.
When it comes to people answeringstraight up questions, only 26 percent of Americans will say “yes”to wanting their medical records digital. In addition, when it comesto believing they will obtain better, more efficient care, the samepercent – 40 percent, agreed in both 2010 and 2012. This does notspeak for positives in peoples attitudes about EHRs.
Well, people need to be concerned asthe number of electronic medical records being broken into keepsrising and thieves are finding it lucrative. In an article in Computerworld, the author reports that in the past three years. About 21 million patients had their medical records compromised indata security breaches that were big enough to need to be reported tothe Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Office ofCivil Rights (OCR).
“The breachnotification and reporting is part of new rules under the HealthInformation Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act,enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of2009. The rules not only require the public reporting of breaches butalso increased penalties for violations of the Health InsurancePortability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which requiresorganizations to safeguard patient information.”
Much of the data could be protected byencryption and by other means, but most records are not because ofthe perceived cost. Eventually, physicians, hospitals, and insurancecompanies will learn the true cost of unprotected records.