Other key findings from the Markle survey include:

• Majorities of 70 percent to 80 percent of both patients and doctors support privacy-protective practices, such as letting people see who has accessed their records, notifying people affected by information breaches, and giving people mechanisms to exercise choice and correct information.
• Majorities (65 percent of the public and 75 percent of doctors) agreed that it's important to have a policy against the government collecting personally identifiable health information for health IT or healthcare quality-improvement programs.
• If there are safeguards to protect identity at least 68 percent of the public and 75 percent of the doctors expressed willingness to allow composite information to be used to detect outbreaks, bioterror attacks, and fraud, and to conduct research and quality and service improvement programs.
• Large majorities of the public (75 percent) and the doctors (73 percent) said it will be important to measure progress on improving healthcare quality and safety to ensure the public health IT investments will be well spent. Both groups (each at 69 percent) agreed on the importance of specific requirements to improve the nation's health in areas like heart disease, obesity, diabetes and asthma.
• Many are unaware of the health IT incentives: 85 percent of the public and 36 percent of doctors describe themselves as not very or not at all familiar with the health IT incentives program, which makes subsidies available for doctors and hospitals to increase use of information technology.

"We all have a stake in making sure that information is protected and trusted so that it can be put to best use to improve our health," Diamond said. "This survey shows that doctors and their patients share many of the same hopes and expectations for advancing health in a connected world."
 
Knowledge Networks (KN) conducted the surveys between Aug. 10 and 26, 2010. The general population survey of 1,582 adults age 18 and older used KN's KnowledgePanel, a probability-based panel of 50,000 individuals designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The survey of 779 physicians was conducted using KN's Physicians Consulting Network (PCN), an invitation-only list of more than 45,000 practicing physicians.

Survey results are available here.