Work

Readability assessment of patient-provider electronic messages in a primary care setting

Year: 2015

Type: article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: The high prevalence of limited health literacy among patients threatens the success of secure electronic messaging between patients from diverse populations and their providers. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to generate hypotheses about the readability of patient and provider electronic messages. METHODS: We collected 31 patient-provider e-mail exchanges (n = 119 total messages) from a safety-net primary care clinic. We compared the messages' mean word count and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Levels (FKGLs), calculated the frequency of provider messages below an FKGL = 8, and assessed readability concordance between patients' and providers' messages. RESULTS: Patients used more words in their initial e-mails compared to providers, but the FKGLs were similar, and 68% of provider messages were written below an FKGL = 8. Of 31 exchanges, 9 (29%) contained at least one patient message with an FKGL > 3 grade levels lower than the corresponding provider message(s). CONCLUSION: Our study demonstrates that most providers are able to respond to patient electronic messages with a matching reading level.

Source: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association

DOI: 10.1093/jamia/ocv087

Authors: Jacob B Mirsky, Lina Tieu, Courtney Lyles, Urmimala Sarkar

Institutions: University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco General Hospital

Language: English

Topic: Health Literacy and Information Accessibility

Subfield: General Health Professions

Field: Health Professions

Domain: Health Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: bronze

Funders: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality