New Study: Seventy-Eight Percent of Americans Favor Electronic Medical Records
(January 31, 2011) In one of the first studies to be focused on the attitudes of consumers toward health IT NORC at the University of Chicago has found that Americans favor use of electronic medical records (EMRs) by a wide margin (78%). The results of the NORC study are important because they appear to show popular support for initiatives of President George W. Bush in 2004 and President Barak Obama in 2009 to assure that all Americans have EMRs by 2014. The findings were published in the February edition of the journal, HSR: Health Services Research.
Other findings showed that
78% of Americans believe EMRs could improve care
59% believe EMRs could reduce health costs
72% support sharing of health care information among providers
80% favored use of e-prescribing (sending prescriptions electronically from the physician to the pharmacy)
79% thought that personal health records (an electronic record designed specifically for consumers to access over the web) would help patients to be better informed about their health.
Despite the fact that 48% of Americans are concerned about the privacy of medical records, fully 64% said that the benefits of EMRs outweigh privacy concerns
Most previous studies have focused on the attitudes of clinicians or health organizations. Surprisingly few have focused on the attitudes of consumers toward health IT and, of those, none were based on a sample that fully represents the American people.
Americans are not without reservations, however. Forty-four percent said they are not willing to pay to increase the use of health IT, and 57% said that use of health IT would make no difference in their choice of a physician.
Moreover, individuals with lower income and those who have less familiarity with electronic technology have less favorable attitudes towards health IT. This implies that some of the populations that are most likely to benefit from health IT may be least open-minded about it.
“Our core finding is that a large majority of Americans support use of health IT to improve health care and safety, and reduce costs, which suggests that government and industry efforts to increase the effectiveness and use of health IT are generally consistent with the public’s wishes” said Dan Gaylin, NORC’s Executive Vice President for Research, and the lead author of the study. “But there is still room for efforts to demonstrate the advantages of health IT among some important demographic groups.”
NORC at the University of Chicago, is an independent research center, serves the public interest and improves lives through objective social science research that supports informed decision making.