Sharing physicians’ notes with adult family members can improve elderly patients’ care, but privacy concerns make them reticent to do so.
Amid high-profile reports of medical record breaches, concern over the confidentiality of the medical information contained in physician records remains high. At the same time, hospitals can present unique dangers for elderly patients, some of which can be mitigated by including caregivers in decision-making and in the discharge process.
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With a mere 20% of patients making their records available to family members, Sandra Petronio, a professor and the director of Communication Privacy Management Center at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, undertook a study to see why, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.
She found that adult children of elderly patients frequently broke the patient’s confidentiality in situations where the patient showed confusion, or where they were concerned about the patient’s safety.
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While that constitutes a well-intentioned and clinically beneficial disclosure, the range and type of sensitive information available in medical records may lead many elderly patients to think twice before sharing them openly with their adult children.
“Mom and dad don’t want you to see all the medicines they take, and no child really wants to know if their parents are sexually active and taking Cialis, Viagra or a medication for an STD,” says Charles Safran, chief of clinical informatics at Beth Israel Deaconess and Harvard Medical School.
He heads a project called InfoSage, which allows patients to share their healthcare information selectively, giving them more control over who sees which parts of their medical history.