Impact of low health literacy on patients’ health outcomes: a multicenter cohort study

This study aims to assess the health literacy of medical patients admitted to hospitals and examine its correlation with patients' emergency department visits, hospital readmissions, and durations of hospital stay.

This prospective cohort study recruited patients admitted to the general internal medicine units at the two urban tertiary care hospitals. Health literacy was measured using the full-length Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults. Logistic regression analyses were performed to examine the correlation between health literacy and the desired outcomes. The primary outcome of interest of this study was to determine the correlation between health literacy and emergency department revisit within 90 days of discharge. The secondary outcomes of interest were to assess the correlation between health literacy and length of stay and hospital readmission within 90 days of discharge.