Clear health communication is the foundation of the health care delivery system. It affects the continuum of care from prevention and screening to history taking to explaining a diagnosis and treatment.
For physicians and other health care providers, clear health communication is about helping patients to understand and act on health care information so they can follow medical instructions with the goal of improving health outcomes.
Millions of adult Americans – 90 million – have trouble understanding health information. This is known as low health literacy, and its scope and impact has serious consequences for individual patient outcomes and the health care system as a whole.
By following the path of this section for physicians and other health care providers, you will learn about:
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