People who have trouble reading and understanding written health-related materials are more than twice as likely to wind up in the hospital as people with better reading skills, according to a study published Friday.
"After adjusting for other factors, health illiteracy appears to increase the risk of hospital admission by 50 percent," said Dr. David Baker, a researcher at Case Western Reserve University and MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland.He and colleagues from Emory University and the Rollins School of Public Health, both in Atlanta, studied the experiences of nearly 1,000 adults who used the emergency department and walk-in clinic at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital over two years. Their findings are reported in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
All the patients took a test that measured their ability to read and comprehend written materials such as a consent form and directions for taking medicines, monitoring blood sugar and keeping appointments.
The researchers found that 31.5 percent of the patients who had inadequate health literacy were hospitalized at least once during the next two years. The hospitalization rate for those found to have adequate reading skills was 14.9 percent.
"The results of this study really aren't entirely unexpected, given other studies that have shown better educated people have better health," Baker said. "But we really don't know why patients with limited reading skills were more likely to be hospitalized.
"It may be that people with inadequate literacy are less aware of when they need to seek medical care, so they seek it later, when their conditions have become more severe."
Other studies also have shown that people with less education and poorer reading skills are less likely to know how to care for themselves generally, even if they have chronic illnesses.
Baker and his co-authors point out that the findings have broad implications for health care costs.