Health in a Networked Life

Public investments in health IT should come with accountability and privacy protections, and lead to improved health.

The public and physicians agree that patients should have online tools to view, download, and share their health information.

The results are drawn from a general population survey of 1,582 adults and a survey of 779 physicians conducted by Knowledge Networks between August 10 and 26, 2010.

Patient and doctor use of social media, both separately and together, is an area that requires much more study.

Majorities of the public and doctors surveyed say current payment is based on volume and view payment reform as an important step to improving health care.

There are high levels of public and physician agreement on what the priorities should be for the health IT investments, but low levels of familiarity with the actual program elements.

Both groups view privacy and security protections as important requirements for them to support health IT efforts.

A majority of the public says that patients should get after-visit summaries; more than a third of doctors agree.

Solid majorities of both the public and doctors surveyed support the principle that people ought to be able to download and keep copies of their personal health information.

Reported PHR use by the public is 10 percent, up from 3 percent found in Markle’s 2008 survey. A similar proportion of doctors say they offer PHR tools to their patients.