US doctors don't believe patients need full access to health records

Although electronic health records (EHR) systems may contain your health information, most physicians believe you should only be able to add information to them, not get access to all of their contents.

A survey released this week at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in New Orleans, was conducted by Harris Interactive for health care consultancy Accenture. It involved 3,700 doctors in eight countries. It found that 82 percent of U.S. physicians want patients to update their electronic health records with information about themselves, but only 31 percent believe patients should have full access to that record; 65 percent believe patients should have only limited access. Four percent said patients should have no access at all. The findings were consistent among doctors surveyed in eight countries: Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Singapore, Spain, and the United States. The research was conducted between November and December 2012.