Abstract
BackgroundGiven that China has encouraged EHR usage in hospitals for more than a decade, patients’ access to their own EHR data is still not as widely utilized as expected.MethodsWe cultivated a survey with four categories and field interviews of measures to identify whether hospitals have already released EHR data to patients, inpatients or outpatients, the top EHR release contents and the most popular release software.ResultsOf the 1344 responding hospitals from 30 provinces nationwide, 41.37% of hospitals have already released their EHR data to patients, of which 97.12% are through smart apps. More than 91% of hospitals use WeChat, and 32.37% of hospitals developed their own standalone apps or use vendors’ apps. A total of 54.63% were released to both outpatients and inpatients, and the top release contents were all objective. A rough estimation is made that releasing EHR data to patients via smart apps may save the hospital 15.9 million RMB per year and patients 9.4 million RMB altogether.ConclusionsEHR data release is believed to bring both patient and hospital cost savings and efficiency gains but is still considered spontaneous and requires legal support and government regulation.
Highlights
Given that China has encouraged electronic health record (EHR) usage in hospitals for more than a decade, patients’ access to their own EHR data is still not as widely utilized as expected
We report an investigation with survey and field interviews on the actual adoptions, obstacles and cost savings of EHR data release to patients’ smart apps and conclude with policy suggestions
Hospital survey The primary of all measures is whether a hospital has already released EHR data to patients or not
Summary
Given that China has encouraged EHR usage in hospitals for more than a decade, patients’ access to their own EHR data is still not as widely utilized as expected. While electronic health record (EHR) adoption and its use have been reported by hospitals globally [1–5], China has promoted nationwide EHR adoption in hospitals for more than a decade [6–10]. The National Health Commission of China (NHC) has published policies to encourage hospitals and small-sized medical facilities to release EHR data to citizens since 2013 [20–25]. We report an investigation with survey and field interviews on the actual adoptions, obstacles and cost savings of EHR data release to patients’ smart apps and conclude with policy suggestions. Our results provide an important baseline for policymakers to craft regulations for patient access to EHR data
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