Roughly 80 percent of doctors and patients agree that it's important for providers and hospitals to share information electronically to improve care coordination, cut unnecessary costs and reduce medical errors, a new survey by the Markle Foundation concludes. By similar margins, doctors and patients agree that providers must safeguard the privacy and security of medical information. And three-quarters of the public and doctors say that the effects of the nation's investment in health IT on the quality of care should be measured to make sure that the money is well spent.

Some other findings of the survey are more surprising: 74 percent of physicians say they want to share patient information electronically with their colleagues; only 17 percent, however, currently do. Another recent poll shows that only 41 percent of office-based doctors plan to apply for government electronic health record incentives. It's hard to see how clinical data can be shared online until doctors have EHRs. 

On the positive side, 10 percent of consumers now say they have personal health records, up from 3 percent in 2008 and 7 percent last year. Seventy percent of patients and 65 percent of doctors say that patients should be able to download their personal health information online.

Still, a clear divide between doctors and patients is found when it comes to post-visit summaries: 70 percent of the public wants either a written or online care summary after each visit, while only 36 percent of physicians feel it is necessary, suggesting that doctors like the idea of patients downloading summaries, as long as it doesn't create any extra work for them. Only 4 percent of doctors surveyed provide such summaries. 

To learn more:
- read the Healthcare IT News article
- here are the Markle survey results
- check out the iHealthBeat article on physicians' plans to apply for EHR incentives