Don’t Blame Your Patients
Poor treatment outcomes. Untreated chronic conditions. Lousy patient satisfaction results.
Your patients don’t ignore your course of treatment out of spite. Patients don’t want to continue to be sick. And they don’t rate their providers poorly on satisfaction surveys only because they had to wait (ok, so maybe sometimes, but that probably isn’t the only reason).
The sad reality is, your patients may simply not understand you.
This isn’t an opinion, but a sad truth. What care providers are saying isn’t always being heard. And even when it’s heard, it’s not only understood.
Only 12% of adults have proficient health literacy.
Approximately 1 in 4 adults only read at a 5th grade level.
1 in 3 of adults would have difficulty with common health tasks, such as following directions on a prescription drug label or adhering to a childhood immunization schedule using a standard chart.
80% of patients over 60 have trouble filling out forms.
Nine out of 10 adults struggle to understand and use health information when it is unfamiliar, complex or jargon-filled.
Where’s the gap? It could be that most healthcare materials are written at a 10th grade level.
No wonder patients with chronic illnesses get worse, particularly those with lower literacy rates, non-native English speakers, or those challenged by other social determinants of health.
This isn’t about patients making bad choices. This is about not understanding, and as healthcare service providers, we are ultimately accountable for being understood.
Patients with health literacy problems are less likely to understand and participate in disease prevention and health promotion programs and are more likely to be hospitalized than those with adequate health literacy, resulting in an additional $69 billion in health care costs annually (in 2004 dollars).
Ready to re-imagine what patient education and communications can and should look like?
We can do better, together.
When patient know better, they choose better. Better health choices for themselves and their family. They follow recommended advice more often. They realize better clinical outcomes (aka, they lead healthier, happier lives).