Privacy in Practice: The Role of EHRs in Pediatrician Interactions with Patients
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Small Research Grants Program
Award Amount: $97,592 | Effective Dates: 09/01/2013 – 02/28/2016 |Award ID: 7 R03 HS021537-02
Project Personnel: Principal Investigator Timothy Stablein (Sociology)
Project Summary: This study will explore the ways that adolescents and providers think about the privacy and use of health information, and whether they think privacy concerns, and/or the use of electronic health records (EHRs), affect doctor-patient communication or interaction. Secondly, we will explore how perceptions of privacy and the use of EHRs affect the way pediatricians communication with other clinicians and patients and how they use health information technology (HIT) to record and disseminate patient information. Exploring HER and privacy perceptions among adolescents and the role they play in information exchanges among clinicians and patients presents an opportunity to understand the role of HIT in contemporary pediatric care and the significance that privacy perceptions have for the overall delivery of health care. To explore these research questions, qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interviews will be conducted with ambulatory pediatric patients and pediatricians within Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth (CHaD) Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, New Hampshire. This exploratory, qualitative research design offers an opportunity to understand how expectations, perceptions, and interactions occurring among doctors and patients, shape communication and information flows and exchanges.