5 things to know about patient perceptions of health info privacy, security

Healthcare consumers became less concerned about the privacy and security of their medical and related records in the three-year period 2012 to 2014. This held despite the continuing growth in provider adoption of health information exchange (HIE) and EHR technology. But will the trend of trust endure in the wake of the massive, high-profile data breaches that started dropping like confidence-busting bombs in 2015?

That’s one burning question to emerge from an annual survey conducted by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) in the 2012-14 window.

“Whether these recent breaches may negatively impact individuals’ perceptions” going forward “is unclear and warrants monitoring,” note the ONC’s Vaishali Patel, PhD, MPH, and colleagues in a brief posted to HealthIT.gov Dashboard Feb. 16.

The national phone survey drew completed responses from 2,050 participants in 2012; 2,107 in 2013; and 2,123 in 2014.

Here are highlights from the ONC brief.

1. Concerns about the privacy and security of both paper and electronic medical records nosedived between 2013 (75 percent privacy/69 percent security) and 2014 (58 percent privacy/52 percent security). Meanwhile, only 5 percent of survey respondents withheld information from their healthcare provider due to either privacy or security concerns related to their medical records in 2014, and this rate of refusal was fairly consistent with that of the prior two years (8 percent in 2013, 7 percent in 2012).
2. In 2014, about one in five respondents expressed lack of concern about both the privacy and the security of their medical records. The proportion of individuals who expressed zero concerns about the security of their medical records nearly doubled between 2013 and 2014, from 11 percent to 19 percent.
3. Privacy and security concerns in 2014 didn’t differ much between electronic vs. paper records. Very or somewhat concerned about security: 51 percent electronic vs. 53 percent paper. Very or somewhat concerned about privacy: 57 percent electronic vs. 64 percent paper.
4. Between 2012 and 2014, at least three-quarters of individuals supported their healthcare providers’ use of EHRs despite any potential privacy or security concerns. Consistently between 2012 and 2014, 80 percent or more of individuals believed healthcare providers had measures in place to reasonably protect EHRs.
5. In that same window, at least 7 in 10 individuals supported electronically exchanging their health records despite potential privacy or security concerns. In 2014, more than three-quarters of individuals indicated that they wanted their healthcare providers to electronically share their medical record with other providers treating them despite any potential privacy or security concerns they may have.

In their concluding summary, Patel et al. point out that it’s unclear as to whether the significant decreases in concerns between 2013 and 2014 “are an anomaly or whether this represents the beginning of a trend toward decreasing privacy and security concerns.”

Either way, post-2015 and its big breaches, ONC plans to continue providing “ongoing guidance to healthcare providers on cybersecurity and other issues to protect EHRs,” they write, as such guidance “may help ensure that health care providers implement the most up-to-date measures to protect health information.”