A large part of that growth is driven by health care’s increasing reliance on IT — and the people who design and maintain IT systems. Electronic health records play a huge part in that — physician adoption of EHRs has roughly doubled in the past two years.

Along with installing and maintaining EHR systems, hospitals and practices adopting EHRs are creating a larger need for skilled people who can train medical professionals on those systems.

The survey conducted by Health Tech Review polled IT managers, administrative managers, executives and physicians representing all types of health organizations.

The results indicate the major ongoing trends health care pros expect to be grappling with continue to be the use of electronic health records (EHRs). A close second is adoption of tablets in the workplace.

To see the full results of the survey, click here.

Specifically, doctors who switched from one EHR system to another had an increase in their rate of prescribing errors as measured at three months and one year after adoption. By year two, the prescribing rate had decreased again.

For practices that added new EHR systems saw dramatic improvement in errors rates — in some cases prescribing errors decreased as much as 85%.

The study, SailPoint Market Pulse Survey, found that 80% were concerned about moving their personal medical information to an electronic form. As for the types of breaches they’re most concerned about:

• 35% cited identity theft
• 29% said exposure of their personal information online
• 10% named having their personal information seen by people who aren’t directly related to their care, and
• 5% were worried about having an employer learn about their health condition.

One of the country’s leading hospitals is trying to explain how 20,000 patient records ended up on a homework-help site for nearly a year. The breach, discovered just last month, involved patients who visited Stanford Hospital’s Palo Alto, California emergency room during a six-month period in 2009. The records included patients’ names, diagnosis codes, billing charges and dates of their stays at the hospital.

The information was in a spreadsheet created by Multi-Specialty Collection Services, a vendor the hospital used for billing services. Somehow, the data made its way to a site called Student of Fortune, which lets students solicit paid help with their homework. An as-yet-unidentified person had posted the data in September 2010 along with a question about how to convert the data into another format.

The hospital was alerted to the breach by a patient who found the data online. Stanford contacted the site, who removed the data immediately, and alerted state and federal agencies to the breach as well as affected patients. According to the hospital, its internal investigation indicates no one employed by Stanford was responsible for the data leak.

The Dept. of Health and Human Services is expected to investigate further. The vendor involved hasn’t released a statement. Stanford has stopped using the vendor.

A hospital spokesperson noted that the breach didn’t include any information such as Social Security Numbers or credit card numbers that could be used for identity theft, but the hospital is providing free credit monitoring to patients who were affected.

But even with a minimal risk to patients’ credit scores, the breach is disturbing both for the length of time the records were available and the types of information they contain. One patient’s mother pointed out that her teenage son’s mental health diagnosis was released. She’s trying to hide from him that his records have been leaked. She fears that knowing that would embarrass him to the point of damaging the progress he’s made.

The latest research shows 70% of hospitals expect to meet the first stage meaningful use requirements set out by federal guidelines. But 78% still expect to keep using paper records for as long as another five years.

That’s the takeway from a recent survey by Iron Mountain. The survey asked 200 health information professionals about their use of, and plans for, paper patient records. Other findings of the survey are:

• 49% of hospitals say they’ve scanned what they need within their budget, while 23% report they’re within budget but still have a backlog of records to scan
• 54% are scanning records at on-site records rooms, while 29% use a centralized scanning location
• 72% rely on full-time employees to scan compared to just 9% who outsource to third parties and 6% who use part-time staff
• 44% of hospitals aren’t explicitly measuring the effectiveness or productivity of their scanning process;
• 58% will shred their paper records after scanning is finished, while 38% plan to store the paper in their on-site records room or in an off-site facility.

Researchers at Stanford University crunched data from a huge FDA side effects database, looking for evidence of diabetes-related drug interactions. They found that two drugs commonly used to treat depression and high cholesterol appear to make a dangerous combination.

According to the report, taking Paxil (paroxetine) and Pravachol (pravastin) can dangerously increase some patients’ blood sugar, sending borderline patients into a diabetic state or making existing cases of the disease harder to control. Researchers estimate more than 700,000 people take both drugs.

The finding was completely unexpected. The researchers said it showed the value of having access to large numbers of electronic health records so they can essentially study large populations in real time.

The study was published in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics.

A recent survey of physician practices found that 41% of office-based physicians plan to achieve meaningful use of EHRs and apply for incentive payments. Most of those — about a third of all office-based physicians — plan to apply for incentives this year.

That’s according to research by the National Center for Health Statistics.

A similar survey by the American Hospital Association found that 81% of acute care non-federal hospitals expect to achieve meaningful use of EHRs and apply for incentive payments — two-thirds of hospitals plan to enroll during the first stage of the incentive programs.

A few privacy advocates had warned that the Obama administration’s move to expand EHRs, combined with operations like Wikileaks that seek to expose information, could lead to disaster.

Of course, there seems to be little reason for an outsider to release the news that Aunt Hilda is being treated for gout and that her diabetes is in check — and if they did release that information, it’s unclear why any media outlet would actually run with it.

But the hypothetical threat does exist — and if individual patient records were released, it would be a black eye for the health care organization that was meant to safeguard the information.

Do you think EHRs are secure enough? Share your thoughts in the comments.

One reason: 65% of doctors don’t have e-mail access to patients to begin with.

That’s one of the takeaways from the recent survey conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change.

Many in the health care field thought that as electronic health records (EHRs) became more common, use of e-mail as a way to communicate with patients would grow as well. That hasn’t really been the case: Doctors using EHRs are more likely to use e-mail — but the increase hasn’t nearly kept pace with the usage of EHRs.

The researchers believe the lack of reimbursement for e-mail consultations with patients is a big barrier for most physicians. Doctors most likely to use e-mail were part of a large group practices or HMOs and those working in medical school-owned offices, clinics or hospital staffs. Solo practitioners were least likely to communicate with patients via e-mail.