The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has announced that it “plans to conduct a nationwide survey of public opinion about electronic health information exchange and the privacy and security of personal data that is shared.”
Given the resources ONC is pouring into HIT, these days, some sense of the public’s understanding of these issues would certainly be helpful. The problem is, ONC’s sister agency, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), recently conducted what appears to be a very similar survey.
According to ONC’s notice, “based on findings from a comprehensive literature review, little is known about individuals' attitudes toward electronic health information exchange and the extent to which they are interested in determining by whom and how their health information is exchanged. The proposed information collection will permit us to better understand individuals' attitudes toward electronic health information exchange and its associated privacy and security aspects . . .”
But when we commented on the AHRQ a few months ago, we pointed to the report’s stated goal to“gain in-depth understanding of health care consumers’ awareness, beliefs, perceptions, and fears concerning health IT, (and) to learn how consumers may wish to be engaged in the development of health IT, and at what point they should be engaged.”
It’s possible, of course, that the ONC survey will be significantly different from AHRQ’s survey, but based on the comment that “a comprehensive literature review” came up more or less empty, we’re inclined to wonder if ONC is even aware of AHRQ’s effort.
The dreaded “silo effect” is a constant concern in any bureaucracy, and no bureaucracy is bigger than the federal government. But in a time when public concern over federal expenditures is intense, to say the least, policymakers need to do all they can to show that they’re not simply duplicating the efforts of their colleagues in the next silo over.
With that goal in mind, ONC might want to review the AHRQ report before deciding whether it needs to do a survey of its own.
Jeff Rowe blogs daily at Priming the Pump.
