Increasing Healthcare Literacy is the Need of the Hour

While the healthcare industry faces challenges in improving quality of care, curbing healthcare costs, and extending its access to the wider population, there exist several other roadblocks as well. The way consumers interact with the healthcare system has a significant impact on their health outcomes. Though providing people with better access to care and medicine are essential, it is only a part of improving the health. Understanding of the provided health information and treatment is an important step towards improving patient health outcomes and this is what we call ‘health literacy’ or ‘healthcare literacy’.

The capacity of a person to obtain, process, and understand basic health related information and services are necessary to make good health decisions, and thereby improve overall healthcare outcomes. Inadequate or limited healthcare literacy can affect people of all ages, ethnicity, social incomes, and education levels and can have an effect on worsening health outcomes and increasing health costs. However, the people from lower socioeconomic and minority groups are the ones greatly impacted as there underlie higher health disparities. It is vital that healthcare industry advocates a systematic approach that creates effective, innovative communication with the consumers regarding healthcare to improve health literacy among the population.

The Rising Need for Health Literacy:

Health literacy is all about how consumers understand healthcare information, how they use the provided knowledge to make informed decisions, and how well they manage their health and well being based on their decisions or health outcomes. Health literacy can be defined as the ability of consumers to acquire health information, understand it, and use it to make important decisions concerning their health.

The immediate focus of medical practitioners today is to empower people to manage their own health so that they can improve their health literacy for better. It is necessary to ensure having consistently high standards of health information delivered to the public so that they can understand and use it to upkeep their health conditions. Medical practitioners have to identify, recognize, and improve healthcare literacy among their patients and caregivers alike. Similarly, they also need to be aware of the fact that health illiteracy is common among all socioeconomic and educational levels of the society, irrespective of age, ethnicity, etc.

Low healthcare literacy is considered a risk factor for poor health outcomes. It would probably affect the patient’s ability to understand medical instructions, navigate the health system, and seek support from healthcare professionals, if and when needed. This can increase the risk of emergency care, hospitalization, and mismanagement of medication as they do not understand their disease or condition and treatment properly. Moreover, low health literacy levels can impact the safety and quality of healthcare and subsequently, contribute to higher healthcare costs. This is why increasing healthcare literacy is becoming the need of the hour in recent years and healthcare professionals are on their way to make it happen.

Ways to Improve Health Literacy:

There are several ways in which healthcare providers can improve healthcare literary by improving their communication with their patients and families, helping them better understand health information and their health condition or treatment.

Use simple language

Generally, it is necessary to ask open-ended questions to the patients and their caregivers so that medical professionals can assess their understanding of information in written materials, including prescription labels. They have to use plain, non medical language while communicating with patients. This can enhance the understanding of health information dramatically. It would be better to use patients' own terms for their conditions and treatments such that alternative language and familiar medical terminology would help. For instance "pain-killer" can be mentioned instead of "analgesic"; and "birth control" for "contraception". Also giving a simple explanation for medical problems and terminologies can help patients understand their condition and know what should be done. It is always better to avoid complicated medical terms or jargons and start using simple communicable words that are as clear as possible, which help to minimize the risk of misunderstanding.

Make use of graphics and pictures

Pictorial representation of medical conditions and treatments can reach people even if they do not have good literacy. Healthcare organizations can use graphics and pictures related to medical conditions instead of giving long written instructions. Images or informational graphics are of good use in making people learn effectively. Providing patients with pamphlets or links to online resources like videos or slideshows are suggested for use as opposed to text. Similarly, developments in technology can favor physicians in explaining certain complicated medical conditions visually. It would be of big benefit to utilize technological tools to connect effectively and reach more patients, thus improving health literacy levels.

Overall, healthcare literacy is critical for maintaining good health. In times when health illiteracy is widespread across the country, especially among rural populations, it is vital for clinicians to commit to improving healthcare literacy, despite the language and cultural barriers. With improved healthcare literacy, there are significant payoffs that deliver better healthcare outcomes, better healthcare providers/patient relationships, better patient safety, and reduced healthcare disparities.