Approximately 60% of Australian adults have low health literacy. This means more than half of the people who visit our health services have trouble understanding day-to-day health information and managing their health.
People with limited health literacy report poorer health outcomes, are less likely to take up preventative health behaviours, such as screening and immunisation, and are hospitalised more often.
Health professionals and health services have an important role to play to help empower patients to access, understand, and act on health information, regardless of their level of health literacy.
To support your staff to improve communication with patients, and implement processes to increase patient engagement and understanding, Primary Care Impact has launched a new quality improvement activity, Improve health literacy.
The web page also includes free access to Healthy North Coast’s health literacy officers to support your practice with any further training or assistance.
Visit Primary Care Impact today to begin your next quality improvement initiative.