Understanding Health Literacy Is Important For Care Management

If you’re going to care for a patient, it’s critical to understand their level of health literacy.  A new study shows the correlation (not necessarily cause and effect) between health literacy and death.  Older people were twice as likely to die if they had poor health literacy in a five-year period.

“Previous studies have found that low health literacy is associated with less knowledge of chronic diseases, poorer mental and physical health, less use of preventive health services and higher rates of hospital admission, according to background information in the report.”