Errors across the Internet

Anyone who has recently examined his or her credit report knows that errors are common and often significant. Errors in a medical record could be fatal.

It’s axiomatic that paper records have errors. But the records don’t have much reach. An error in your EHR, however, that says you have a possibly stigmatizing condition (depression, addiction, a sexually transmitted disease) can be seen by many people before you even know of the error.

The likelihood of errors could also increase when lots of people have the ability to enter data. John Halamka, a physician and chairman of the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel, whose job it is to set data standards for exchange of information over the network, insists that security will be tight. Each local network would require that individuals logging into the system have unique IDs tied to a designation such as R.N. or M.D. A patient’s information would be divided into subsets so that the dentist’s nurse would be unable to view or alter the diagnosis of your psychiatrist. Or gossip about it to neighbors.

Without such safeguards, some consumers might be reluctant to seek treatment for certain conditions out of fear of discovery. “No one wants strangers to see the details of things like their cancer treatments, or their parent’s sexual dysfunction, or their child’s diagnosis by a therapist,” says Deborah Peel, M.D., a psychoanalyst in Austin, Texas, and president of Patient Privacy Rights, a nonprofit medical-privacy watchdog group.