Poor health literacy can lead to major health, financial problems
By: Source: AARP.org Date Posted: 2008-01-22 13:40:08.836633-05:00
Poor health literacy can have profound consequences on patient safety and health care costs.
Take, for example, Cordell, a 30-year-old high school graduate who reads at a 5th grade level. At her hospital admission she was presented with informed consent documents that she could not read or understand. To avoid the embarrassment of revealing her reading difficulties, Cordell went ahead and signed all the papers placed in front of her.
It was at her two-week follow-up appointment where she learned that doctors had performed a hysterectomy. Her reading problem had caused her to lose a part of her body that she never realized was at risk.
The Institute of Medicine's definition of health literacy is "the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic information and services needed to make appropriate decisions regarding their health." The key concept is understanding information needed to make good decisions about health habits and health care, which is a huge problem across the country.
Adult patients with low literacy skills face all kinds of barriers upon entering the health care system; from prescription labels and appointment slips, to insurance forms and informed consent documents. Health literacy issues affect up to 50 percent of the adult population of the United States and yet go unrecognized by most health care providers.
A recently released report from the University of Connecticut School of Business concluded that "low health literacy is a major source of economic inefficiency in the healthcare system. The report estimates the cost of low health literacy to the U.S. economy in the range of $106 billion to $238 billion annually. This represents between 7 and 17 percent of all personal healthcare expenditures."
In Wisconsin, approximately one million adults qualify for adult literacy and English language services, while only 75,000 (less than 10 percent) of adults in need of services are currently receiving them.
Wisconsin Literacy, Inc.—a growing network of 46 adult, family and workplace literacy providers—is tuned in to the health literacy problem and is working with health care groups statewide to find a solution. AARP Wisconsin is also getting involved. Communications Director Jim Flaherty has been appointed to Wisconsin Literacy's Board of Directors and serves on its Health Literacy subcommittee.
Wisconsin Literacy invited many public and private partners to a Health-Literacy Summit last June, where many of the barriers to better health literacy were discussed.
Most health care providers at the summit agreed that patient education materials need to be rewritten at lower literacy levels. They said not enough is currently being done to assure patients fully understand the written materials given to them.
"We need to promote quality, accessible, affordable health care, but we also need people to be literate in terms of health care," said Michelle Erikson, Executive Director of Wisconsin Literacy. "Many people feel shut out and intimidated by healthcare documents. We need to create more of a welcoming environment for them. Better health literacy can open doors to better jobs and better health care for everyone. That's what we want to accomplish."
Find more information on health literacy issues online.
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