Health literacy: Your patients can't follow instructions they don't understand

Physicians can improve their patients' health outcomes by taking simple steps to improve health literacy.

Editorial. June 16, 2003.

The problem can be easy to spot -- the immigrant patient with diabetes who speaks little to no English and is bewildered by terms like blood glucose levels and hemoglobin A1c tests.

But it can be hidden, too. A middle-aged mom too ashamed to let on that she can't comprehend many of the words in the brochure about mammograms. The elderly patient with multiple medical conditions who doesn't take his medications as often as he should

The health of about 90 million people in the United States may be at risk because they don't understand and can't act on the health information their doctors give them. Chances are some of your patients are part of this group.

Poor health literacy, although more prevalent among minorities and immigrants, stretches across socioeconomic, racial and ethnic lines.

In fact, literacy skills are a stronger predictor of a person's health than age, income, employment status, education level and race, according to the American Medical Association Foundation.

If patients don't understand their physicians' recommendations, they can't follow them. The statistics bring the impact into focus. Patients with low literacy skills have a 50% increased risk of hospitalization, and only half of all patients take medic [...]