Health Care: Will EHR Deliver on Its Hype?

Widespread use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in the Health Care industry is expected to make the industry much more efficient and dramatically improve the quality of health care that is provided.  The vision is shared by many, and one big element of the Obama stimulus plan was a series of incentives that encourage health care providers to adopt EHR systems.

But while there is much hype and promise for the creation of a national health care system based on EHRs, the public remains skeptical.  A report by CDW finds that nearly half of of the public worries that the introduction of EHRs will adversely affect the security of their personal health information — 40 percent are extremely negative on EHRs while another 9 percent are somewhat negative.   One concern is that employers will be able to gain access to health information and be able to use the information as a basis for offering employment, job advancement, and determining compensation.

While 70 percent of people trust their own doctors to be able to maintain the security of their information when maintained using traditional paper records, only 10 percent of people are confident that once their information is available electronically as an EHR that it will not fall into the hands of insurance companies, the federal government, or their employer.   And it’s not just health information that people are worried about.   People are also worried that financial and personal identity information is at risk with the introduction of EHRs.

• 22 percent of people worry that their personal information could lead to blackmail or identify theft
• 10 percent worry the information could influence employers in their hiring and compensation decisions
• 9 percent worry that their information will be turned over to marketing programs

The public’s poor perception of EHR seems to be based on some amount of truth — there have been lately an increasingly large number of health-care related data breaches.  And disturbingly, the CDW report polled 200 health care offices randomly and found that as many as a third of the offices with Internet connectivity aren’t using firewalls nor have they installed even basic anti-virus software on their office machines.  This despite the fact that HITECH Act of 2009 assesses a fine of up to $25,000 if data breaches occur, and fines can be as large as $1.5 million.