Majority of doctors opposed to full access to your own electronic records

Andrew Michael Nathan

Technology is making transparency easier than ever and with the advent of electronic medical records, you might think doctors and other caregivers would embrace transparency for patients. After all, in the US and most modern counties, you have the right to review your own health records.

Yet a recent survey by Harris Interactive reported first at Computerworld reveals that doctors aren't big fans of full transparency. A survey of 3,700 doctors in eight countries revealed that only 31 percent believe that patients should have full access to their own medical records via electronic means. That's less than one in 3. The majority of those surveyed, some 65 percent, supported "limited access," while the remaining 4 percent believe there should be no access granted to patients. So, despite the fact that we have rights to review and amend our records, doctors don’t want it to be easy for us to do so via electronic means.

I find these numbers incredibly disappointing, although not surprising. While there might be many motivations for wanting to deny patients full access to their medical records, I know firsthand one such motivation: these documents can be terribly inaccurate. Mistakes can run from the serious to the banal. Ars’ own Casey Johnston told me her medical records reported the wrong birthdate for her. Not a huge deal, but also, sort of a silly mistake to make.