When it comes to having control of their medical data, most consumers say they want it but not enough to take serious action for it.
Two in five respondents in a 9,000-person survey by Accenture (NYSE:CAN) said they would be willing to switch providers to have full access to their data. If you’re in the camp of the 84 percent of the surveyed consumers who said that they deserve full access to their medical data, you are probably thinking, “but they shouldn’t have to switch providers for it!” Meanwhile, most doctors surveyed apparently don’t think patients should have full access to their EMRs.
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The majority’s sentiment in this survey echoes my takeaway from the Ponemon Institute’s annual medical identity theft survey last week, in which most of the medical fraud victims surveyed said it was important to control their health records directly, yet more than half of them said they don’t actually check their records.
Thanks to the perseverance of a wave of uber-motivated “epatients” and some key thought leaders, the healthcare industry is making progress toward more open data. But if we really want a culture change in which the patient takes ownership of his own data, there’s still a lot of work to be done on shifting the attitude of the average American healthcare consumers, too.
This makes the kind of data champion who endures a several-years-long battle and an $800 hospital bill to get ahold of his data even more honorable and important.
[Image credits: Accenture; FreeDigitalPhotos user imagerymajestic]
