With healthcare data breaches increasing year over year, patients seem to understand the risk and a recent Xerox eHealth Survey found that nearly half of Americans (44 percent) are worried about having their personal healthcare information stolen.
Personal healthcare information is more valuable to hackers than credit card information, with healthcare data breach numbers climbing year over year, according to the Third Annual 2016 Data Breach Industry Forecast Report Experian. What’s more, according to data from cybersecurity vendor Protenus, in 2016, more than one data breach was reported each day.
The Xerox survey, conducted online by Harris Poll in January 2017 among more than 3,000 U.S. adults ages 18 and older, shows more than three quarters of respondents (76 percent) believe it would be more secure to share healthcare information between providers through a secure electronic method rather than faxing paper documents.
Further, Americans also believe better information sharing across providers can help improve patient care. Nearly 9 out of 10 respondents to the survey (87 percent) believe wait times to receive test results and diagnoses would decrease if providers were able to securely share and access digital patient information from various providers.
In addition, 87 percent of respondents believe quality of service of healthcare providers would improve if there was better information sharing and coordination among different providers.
“It’s clear patients are frustrated by the lack of care coordination and disjointed processes, so much so, that our Xerox survey shows 19 percent of Americans would rather wait in line at the DMV than coordinate between different doctors’ offices to ensure they have all of their records and health information,” Cees Van Doorn, senior vice president, healthcare industry, Xerox, said in a prepared statement.
