Why Consumers Struggle to Understand Healthcare - Health Literacy

Why Consumers Struggle to Understand Healthcare
USNews.com: 1.27.2012

Older patients, caregivers, and family members face growing challenges in understanding and navigating the nation's increasingly complex healthcare system. Consumer illiteracy, long applied to financial matters, also has become an enormous issue in healthcare.

Sophisticated drugs and dosages are more complicated. With many seniors being treated for multiple chronic diseases, there can be dangerous interactive effects of taking medications for these differing problems. Dealing with medical professionals is also often challenging. Consumers don't understand medical language and many healthcare professionals seem incapable of speaking in any other tongue.

"Tens of millions of Americans have limited health literacy," according to a recent article in the journal Health Affairs that was authored by half a dozen government health officials, including Donald Berwick, the former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. "Despite its importance," the experts said, "health literacy has until recently been relegated to the sidelines of healthcare improvement efforts."

Consumer difficulties in understanding healthcare communications can lead to a worsening cycle of health problems, including:
• The reduced ability to interpret medication labels and health messages
• Failure to select and enroll in the most appropriate health insurance plans
• Failure to understand and use the services provided by their health plans
• Problems taking medicines correctly
• Reduced use of a growing array of free preventive medical services
• More hospitalizations and readmissions
• Greater use of costly emergency room care
• Worse health outcomes and earlier deathsREAD MORE !