Sixty-six percent of Americans don’t know where their data goes after they leave their healthcare provider’s office.
Carta Healthcare, a host for clinical data, announced the results of a survey regarding patient healthcare data access in the United States. The results reveal that 60% of consumers don’t have immediate access to their medical records, and another 17% don’t know if they do. Furthermore, 66% of respondents indicate they don’t know where their data goes after they leave their healthcare provider’s office.
The results are from an online survey of 1,014 U.S. consumers conducted by Propeller Insights between October 13, 2022, and October 24, 2022. An earlier press release based on the survey results focusing on patient experience is available here.
Insights regarding data access, ownership, and security
The survey reveals additional insights regarding data access, ownership, and security. Seventy-four percent of respondents indicate that better access to healthcare data provided to doctors and healthcare facilities is a priority, and 45% say they would be more likely to recommend a healthcare provider that gives them better access to their medical data.
Regarding data ownership, nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents believe patients should own their healthcare data, but only 47% believe that patients do own it. The survey also reveals mixed opinions about who Americans think owns their healthcare data: the patient (47%), the healthcare facility (24%), the doctor (16%), and the registry used to store the data (13%).
Regarding data security, 77% of respondents report that secure healthcare data is a top priority, but 71% indicate they are open to sharing their data to draw insights and improve outcomes if their identity is removed.
“Although healthcare professionals are dedicated, highly professional, and even heroic in providing excellent patient care, patients need to have centralized access to their health data to better understand their conditions, improve their experience, and even help treat other patients with similar conditions by sharing their anonymized data,” said Matt Hollingsworth, co-founder and CEO of Carta Healthcare. “In healthcare, the ability to utilize data to its fullest capabilities for transparency and analytics while maintaining privacy makes a huge difference in patient care and patient experience.”