Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Apr 20, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 23, 2019 - Jun 18, 2019
Date Accepted: Jul 28, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Health Care Professionals’ Perspectives on the Secondary Use of Health Records to Improve Quality and Safety of Care in England: Qualitative Study
Background:
Health care professionals (HCPs) are often patients’ first point of contact in what concerns the communication of the purposes, benefits, and risks of sharing electronic health records (EHRs) for nondirect care purposes. Their engagement is fundamental to ensure patients’ buy-in and a successful implementation of health care data sharing schemes. However, their views on this subject are seldom evaluated.
Objective:
This study aimed to explore HCPs’ perspectives on the secondary uses of health care data in England. Specifically, we aimed to assess their knowledge on its purposes and the main concerns about data sharing processes.
Methods:
A total of 30 interviews were conducted between March 27, 2017, and April 7, 2017, using a Web-based interview platform and following a topic guide with open-ended questions. The participants represented a variety of geographic locations across England (London, West Midlands, East of England, North East England, and Yorkshire and the Humber), covering both primary and secondary care services. The transcripts were compiled verbatim and systematically reviewed by 2 independent reviewers using the framework analysis method to identify emerging themes.
Results:
HCPs were knowledgeable about the possible secondary uses of data and highlighted its importance for patient profiling and tailored care, research, quality assurance, public health, and service delivery planning purposes. Main concerns toward data sharing included data accuracy, patients’ willingness to share their records, challenges on obtaining free and informed consent, data security, lack of adequacy or understanding of current policies, and potential patient exposure and exploitation.
Conclusions:
These results suggest a high level of HCPs’ understanding about the purposes of data sharing for secondary purposes; however, some concerns still remain. A better understanding of HCPs’ knowledge and concerns could inform national communication policies and improve tailoring to maximize efficiency and improve patients’ buy-in.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.