Health related data from different providers is critical to the provision of high quality healthcare. At least, that is what patients think. In a survey that was carried out by Humana Subsidiary Transcend Insights, it was determined that 97% of patients would like healthcare organizations to have access to all of their patient records.

According to 87 percent of the survey’s nearly 2,600 respondents, this access is crucial for good health care, even for a certification as simple as first aid certification. In addition, 92% of patients involved in the survey said that for best healthcare, it was important that provider data access be granted for more personalized care. There were 2,600 participants, 87% agree that provider data access is very important.

64% of the participants said that they have used mHealth and more health information technology products for the self management of their records and at the same time, 71% of the participants said that they consider the ability of the providers to access data that is gathered from the health data gathering very important.

Health data and its ready availability is a measure of good health care

Furthermore, patients said that they consider health data and its availability as one measure of good quality health care. According to this survey, 38% of the participants said that they fully trusted providers to have the full access to their health access. Out of the participants, only 27 percent of them said that they had full trust in providers who could not fully access patient health data.

The survey also revealed that despite the trust that patients have vested in the providers, they are consistently falling short of the expectations of the patients. While 71% of the patients said they believe the providers can access all their medical data, the survey administrators think that these patients were mostly giving the providers the benefit of the doubt. It is only about 25% of hospitals that are able to exchange data seamlessly with the independent data providers.

By the year 2015, 65 percent of hospitals were able to receive health data of the patients from the independent data providers. At the same time, 85 percent of hospitals were in a position to send this data. Of these figures, only 38 percent of these hospitals used the data that they exchanged with the providers.

Lack of streamlined technological systems encumbers data exchange

Furthermore, the survey says that the healthcare industry players fail to meet the expectations of the patients because they have not yet put in place the technological pillars that are required to streamline data exchange between the healthcare providers and the independent data providers. Health IT specialists are working round the clock on streamlining the IT systems needed to collate data. However, the survey shows that at the same time, it is still not possible to exchange data as fast as it would be convenient for all the parties involved. Despite the fact that the industry has experienced a lot of digitization in the last ten years, the technical aspect that is called interoperability has so far not been successfully implemented.

The main objective of this survey was to encourage the players in the industry to work harder in order to establish a more streamlined system for health data exchange. The main focus should be patient preference.