Survey: Privacy and security top health IT, HIE challenges

Privacy and security top health IT and health information exchange (HIE) challenges to address this year, according to results of a recent National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) stakeholder survey.

Privacy and security only marginally surpassed other challenges reported in the February survey, including: leveraging health IT to improve healthcare quality; keeping up with the pace of change; articulating value propositions for health IT investments; and exchanging health information with other organizations.

The survey results featured responses from 219 stakeholders (2 percent of the 11,000 approached) that touched upon challenges, drivers, barriers and priorities related to HIE, consumer engagement, health IT education, communication preferences and NeHC’s role.

In addressing barriers to widespread HIE, respondents cited: breadth and pace of change required of stakeholders (96 percent); cost (96 percent); HIE financial sustainability (95 percent); privacy and security (95 percent); EHR vendor readiness (94 percent); and lack of interoperability (93 percent).  

Respondents also weighed in on what components of health IT are the most critical for furthering patient engagement, which 91 percent of respondents deemed “important” or “very important”. The NeHC is particularly interested in this subject due to its work developing a Patient Engagement Framework model.

As identified by those surveyed, these patient engagement characteristics are the more crucial:

• Patient/caregiver ability to checks lab and other diagnostic results online (96 percent);
• Patient/caregiver ability to communicate electronically with provider about changes in health status or adherence to treatment plan (93 percent);
• Ability to patient-enabled caregiver, friend or family member to review medical records electronically when appropriate (92 percent);  
• Patient/caregiver ability to refill prescriptions or access lab results or other personal health data online (92 percent); and
• Patient/caregiver understanding on how their health records are stored securely and how they will be used or shared (92 percent)

Also, respondents said the most impactful drivers of widespread consumer engagement with health IT are: ability to improve care coordination (96 percent); ability to improve healthcare quality (94 percent); provider interest (93 percent); consumer interest (92 percent); ability to reduce healthcare costs (91 percent); and availability of healthcare-related IT tools (91 percent)  

NeHC uses the results of its annual stakeholder survey to help it better accelerate the effective use of health IT to advance health and transform healthcare, according to its March 4 press announcement.

The full report can be viewed here.