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Health Care: Patients Prefer Paper Over Electronic Health Records
It’s a matter of trust. And a majority of patients still aren’t sure that they can yet trust the idea of Electronic Helath Records.
A recent survey conducted by Manhattan Research identified two distinct categories of health consumers. In the majority, nearly 60 percent of patients (which translates to about 140 million people) are those consumers that really have no interest in electronic health records or any benefits which they provide. In contrast, there is another group of health consumer that make up a little less than a quarter of the population that see a strong benefit in using electronic health records.
Monique Levy, Vice President, Research at Manhattan Research, characterized the latter group of pro-EHR consumers as people who “tend to be more proactive in terms of going online to look for health information; they’re more advanced in terms of the devices they use; when we talked about what pain points they experienced with the healthcare system, they were more keenly aware of things that aren’t working. So their profiles suggest they’re more proactive about their health.”
As for the 60 percent majority. Those consumers tend to be to older and “less advanced” and less concerned with healthcare. They often either don’t have a need to access their data or are more passive and have less of a desire to see their personal health care data.
A parallel survey conducted by the EHR vendor Practice Fusion found that about half of consumers just don’t trust EHR’s. Instead, they prefer to use paper. 47 percent thought that paper was safer than electronically stored data. Only 39 percent said that the digital records would be more secure. Doctors, on the other hand, are sold of the benefits of EHR’s, and a majority of doctors prefer the use of EHR’s to paper.
Robert Rowley, Vice President of Research at Manhattan Research, MD, and Practice Fusion’s Medical Director, commented that “As a practicing physician using an EHR, I understand the benefits and some of the concerns both physicians and patients have. With more education about why EHRs are safer than paper charts, we’ll see even more physicians switching from paper and patients demanding a digital solution.”
