AHRQ Guide Addresses Health IT Needs of Patients With Limited Literacy

By News Staff
11/14/2007

Here's something to think about: You've developed a new interactive practice Web site for your patients only to discover that the site is a frustrating maze to patients with limited literacy.

That situation is all too common, according to the authors of Accessible Health Information Technology for Populations with Limited Literacy (21-page PDF file; About PDFs), a new guide from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ, that was prepared by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

According to the guide's authors, an estimated 92 million adults with limited literacy live in the United States. At the same time, the use of health IT is expanding, as physicians, health plans, states and the federal government provide consumers with information and tools to enhance their health care decision-making ability.

The AHRQ resource was created for developers and purchasers of health information technology to help ensure that health IT products are not only available to but also usable by limited-literacy populations. According to the authors, many health IT developers have little knowledge of populations with limited literacy or of the technical standards and aspects of accessible health IT design.

Hence, the resource provides a structure, strategies and other resources for the development of these technologies and can help guide physicians when purchasing or developing their own health IT.

The guidelines for engaging adults with limited literacy include health IT development tips, such as

language that is plain, clear and written at a reading level at or below the sixth-grade level;
content that is relevant to the audience and that assumes little background knowledge about the human body or the health care system;
a format conducive to reading and comprehension and that includes white space, short lines, use of bullets and some content in a question-and-answer format; and
subject matter that appeals to diverse racial and ethnic groups.

A checklist for how to create a Web site useful to patients with limited literacy could be of special benefit to family physicians. To reach such patients, a Web site should, among other things