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The topic of health literacy can be daunting, as there are many factors to address and it impacts the culture of an institution. It is difficult to know how to get your arms around the issue, says Becky Smith, RN, MA, manager of the Section of Patient Education at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.
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Many healthcare institutions are using the seven goals stated in the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy developed by the Department of Health and Human Services to guide health literacy initiatives. The goals include:
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To address the issues of health literacy, St. Vincent Charity Medical Center in Cleveland, OH, made a radical move. It abolished its patient education committee and formed the Health Literacy Institute that consists of an interdisciplinary team of caregivers who are dedicated to improving health literacy through better communication.
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To assess whether nurses practice teaching techniques to improve patient comprehension, they were asked how often they use these techniques "never," "rarely," "occasionally," "most of the time," and "always." Following is their responses:
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When Lorene Payne, EdD, MSN, RN, CNE, a senior nursing instructor in the Nursing Professional Development Department at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, began work on her doctorate, she decided to focus on the question: "Are we as nursing professionals actually putting into practice the methods that help our patients best understand information even though many of them are low health literate?"
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If a patient gives untruthful information to registrars to avoid paying for services, this fraud can result in dangerous clinical outcomes as well as lost revenue.
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Claims denials often occurred because the patient's disposition didn't match up with what the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) required to authorize a procedure, reports Maura Corvino, MSOL, RN, CEN, assistant vice president for emergency services and patient access at Valley Health System in Ridgewood, NJ.
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When a new emergency department (ED) bedside co-pay collection process was implemented at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, CT, access reps were "very, very nervous about what the reaction was going to be," recalls Margaret Trudel, patient access manager.
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After patient access staff at UNC Health Care in Chapel Hill, NC, began receiving bi-weekly reports on how much they collected, their performance began to improve.
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Martin Memorial Health Systems in Stuart, FL, reports an increase in authorization requirements for inpatient and outpatient accounts.
