95% of physicians have experienced treatment delays because of poor record access

Almost all (95 percent) of physicians surveyed have experienced a delay or difficulty delivering medical care because patients' medical records were not accessible to them. Those are the findings of a survey conducted by athenahealth of nearly 3,000 who use the Epocrates medical reference app.

Only 14 percent of physicians said they can access usable electronic health information across all care delivery sites, according to the findings.

The vast majority (87 percent)of physicians identified EHR technical shortcomings as the leading barrier to interoperation; obstacles established by EHR vendors and by hospital/health systems were also highly cited.

Seventy-nine percent of physicians ranked the ability to access relevant patient data from other EHR systems as "very important;" and equal in importance to both security and privacy of patient data, and patient engagement.

Poor information flow happens during transitions at every point in the care continuum. Even when physicians practice within the same organization, only 44 percent report they can share patient information.

Physicians rated medication lists as the information that is most often inaccurate when coming from another health care organization, followed by lab and imaging results.

"This survey confirms what we hear anecdotally from providers every day--in healthcare, we can capture and store data electronically, but we fail miserably at sharing it across the care continuum," said Jonathan Bush, CEO of athenahealth, in a release. "Like the providers we serve, we at athenahealth believe in patient-centered information exchange; meaning, a patient's health information should follow them to every care setting, no matter the EHR system in place. Being interoperable on paper or via system certification alone isn't good enough; vendors must take measures to advance actual interoperation activity across healthcare."