A recent poll suggests that as federal officials move forward on expanding the role of IT in the healthcare sector, they need to make sure that public is on board when it comes to who gets access to patient data.

The poll, conducted by the Michigan-based Ponemon Institute, clearly indicates that, while the public is largely inclined to allow physicians to share patient data, they are much more wary when it comes to allowing federal officials or non-healthcare private companies the same access.

According to a recent article on the poll in Forbes magazine, “of the 868 Americans surveyed about their views on digitizing and storing health records, only 27% said they would trust a federal agency to store or access the data--the same percentage as those who would trust a technology firm like” Google, Microsoft, or General Electric.

The article rightly points out that federal data storage is not part of the Obama administration’s recent push for electronic health records, but the public’s wariness could certainly impact federal and state policy when it comes to the possibility of having companies such as Google managing web-based healthcare portals.

The survey also found that when “asked to rate the sensitivity of various types of personal information, users rated health records as far more sensitive than other information they typically share with Web companies. On a scale from one to seven, medical data received an average rating of 6.64, while credit card information received only a 4.27 and online search records just a 1.86.”

According to Larry Ponemon, the Institute’s director, "The takeaway message is that people still care about privacy."

That fact, when combined with the recent rise in attempts by hackers to access healthcare data, suggests that policymakers need to put security issues front and center in order to reassure the public about the safety of their personal information.