What Types of Protected Health Information Are Most Commonly Shared By Physicians with EHR Systems?

​The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on August 15, 2018, released the first national estimates for the types of protected health information (PHI) that are sent, received, integrated, and searched for by office-based physicians using electronic health record (EHR) systems. The authors said the results could be used as a benchmark in future studies. The study looked at data from the 2015 National Electronic Health Records Survey, a nationally representative survey of nonfederal office-based physicians. Previous studies have shown that 38.2% of physicians sent PHI electronically, 38.3% electronically received PHI, 31.1% integrated PHI electronically, and 34.0% searched for PHI electronically. Only 8.7% of respondents performed all four tasks.