Page 22 - Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

oveRvieW oF iSSUeS

tions and disparate information systems, including data from laboratories,
pharmacies, plans, physicians, or hospitals. A major benefit of eHealth is
the opportunity it offers doctors and other health care providers to con-
nect with the patient through these systems.
Neither patients nor the health care system can benefit, however,
unless the new health information technology is actually adopted and
used. Adoption rates for electronic health records in solo practitioner
offices are about 13 percent, while in large medical practices adop-
tion rates are somewhere between 19 percent to 57 percent. Overall the
adoption rate for EHRs in physician offices is between 17 percent and
25 percent. For hospitals, the adoption rates for EHRs range from 16 per-
cent to 59 percent. CPOE system adoption rates for hospitals range from
4 percent to 21 percent.
According to a Pew Internet and American Life research study,
79 percent of Internet users, or 95 million American adults, have searched
online for information on at least one major health topic (Fox, 2006). A
more recent Pew survey indicated that adults living with a disability or
chronic disease are less likely than others to go online, but once they are
online, they are more likely to look for health information (Fox, 2007).
Such consumer use of electronic systems for obtaining health information
illustrates the potential value of consumer-facing Health IT applications.
According to an October 2005 research report supported by the
Markle Foundation, 60 percent of Americans support the creation of
a secure online “personal health record” service that would allow con-
sumers to

• check and refill prescriptions;
• get results over the Internet;
• check for mistakes in the medical record; and
• conduct secure and private e-mail communication with your doctor
or doctors (Markle Foundation, 2005).

In a recent Commonwealth Fund survey of consumer views about
key health care issues, 94 percent of respondents felt that having easy
access to medical records was very or somewhat important and 93 per-
cent felt the doctors having access to their medical records was very or
somewhat important (Shoen et al., 2006). In June 2006, when the eHealth
Initiative Foundation conducted a number of focus groups and a phone
survey of individuals in the Gulf Coast area on the topic of electronic
health information exchange, it found that 70 percent of those individuals
favored secure, electronic health information exchange that is “protected
and exchanged under current medical privacy and confidentiality stan-
dard procedures” (Shea et al., 2007).

Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.