Clinical trial NCT01862133: Aspiring to Awesome- Patient Preference Privacy Selections in EMR
Official title: Aspiring to Awesome- Patient Preference Privacy Selections in EMR
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Conditions: Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Keywords: Electronic Health Record
Health Information Technology
Patient Privacy
Personal Health Information
Lead sponsor: Indiana University
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Department of Health and Human Services
name: Regenstrief Institute, Inc.
First posted: 2013-05-24
Enrollment: 136
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Observational model: COHORT
Time perspective: PROSPECTIVE
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: Primary Care Clinic

Brief summary: Health information technology, including health information exchange, offers the potential to improve care by providing an integrated view of relevant, integrated patient information from multiple health care providers practicing in multiple sites. However, realizing that potential can be difficult, particularly with respect sensitive information. Increasingly, patients, patient advocate groups, and even the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology are pushing for patients to have more granular control over specifically who can see what personal health information in their electronic health records.

This will be a demonstration project aimed at showing the initial feasibility a system allowing patient controls on their electronic health records. Because of the exploratory nature of the research, the investigators do not have specific hypotheses. The investigators hope that this demonstration and feasibility project will lead to more extensive prospective evaluations of patient control of access to their health records and other tools for enhancing patient control over access to their health records.

Detailed description: In 2010, ONC launched a Challenge Grant program that called for proposals for "enabling enhanced query for patient care." Under this program, the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University developed a Web-based program for patients' to express their preferences for who can access data in their electronic health records (EHR). It then applied these preferences by modifying an existing EHR viewer called Careweb® that is used by the Indiana Network for Patient Care and Eskenazi Health, an urban public health system in Indianapolis.

This study:

1. Produced a bioethical report on "points to consider" to inform electronic health record designers concerning giving patients granular control over access to their health data.
2. Interviewed patients to assess their desires for granular level of control over which personal health information should be shared, with whom, and for what purpose, and whether those preferences vary depending on the sensitivity of patients' health information.
3. Developed a Web-based patient-centered user interface that allows them to choose whether to provide or restrict access to their health information, focusing on who (health care providers and non-providers), what information (all, none, sensitive information only), and when (periods of time in their lives during which they desire restricting access to their health information) .
4. Reprogrammed the user interface of Careweb®, a data viewing system used by clinicians in Eskenazi Health, the third largest safety net health system in the U.S., and the Indiana Network for Patient Care, the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive health information exchange in the country. The reprogrammed viewer interface allows patients' preferences to control who sees what information in a patient's electronic health record.
5. Performed a demonstration study among 32 health care providers (9 physicians and 23 clinical staff) and 105 patients in an inner city primary care practice where patients recorded their preferences concerning who could access what information in their electronic health records, and then implemented those preferences during a 6-month real-world study in Eskenazi Health.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

For Patients:

* all adults 18 years or older who were fluent in English and had visited the study primary care clinic at least twice in the previous year

For Providers:

* all personnel of all types practicing in General Medicine Clinic, both Firms A and B, on the 4th floor of Wishard's Primary Care Center. For those physicians who agree to participate, attempted to recruit 10 patients who had visited their primary care physician at least twice in the previous 1 year.

Exclusion Criteria:

* will be lack of English fluency and inability to communicate due to physiologic or cognitive difficulties.

Primary outcomes:
measure: Number of Patients Recording Preferences to Restrict Provider Access to Some or All Electronic Health Record (EHR) Data
timeFrame: 6 month study
measure: Providers' Opinion of Patients' Controlling EHR Access
timeFrame: 6 month study
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Indianapolis
country: United States
facility: Wishard Health Services, Primary Care Center
state: Indiana
Study officials:
affiliation: Indiana University
name: William Tierney, MD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Caine K, Tierney WM. Point and counterpoint: patient control of access to data in their electronic health records. J Gen Intern Med. 2015 Jan;30 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S38-41. doi: 10.1007/s11606-014-3061-0.
citation: Meslin EM, Schwartz PH. How bioethics principles can aid design of electronic health records to accommodate patient granular control. J Gen Intern Med. 2015 Jan;30 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S3-6. doi: 10.1007/s11606-014-3062-z.
citation: Leventhal JC, Cummins JA, Schwartz PH, Martin DK, Tierney WM. Designing a system for patients controlling providers' access to their electronic health records: organizational and technical challenges. J Gen Intern Med. 2015 Jan;30 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S17-24. doi: 10.1007/s11606-014-3055-y.
citation: Schwartz PH, Caine K, Alpert SA, Meslin EM, Carroll AE, Tierney WM. Patient preferences in controlling access to their electronic health records: a prospective cohort study in primary care. J Gen Intern Med. 2015 Jan;30 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S25-30. doi: 10.1007/s11606-014-3054-z.
citation: Tierney WM, Alpert SA, Byrket A, Caine K, Leventhal JC, Meslin EM, Schwartz PH. Provider responses to patients controlling access to their electronic health records: a prospective cohort study in primary care. J Gen Intern Med. 2015 Jan;30 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S31-7. doi: 10.1007/s11606-014-3053-0.
citation: Caine K, Kohn S, Lawrence C, Hanania R, Meslin EM, Tierney WM. Designing a patient-centered user interface for access decisions about EHR data: implications from patient interviews. J Gen Intern Med. 2015 Jan;30 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S7-16. doi: 10.1007/s11606-014-3049-9.