This month’s issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings has two interesting studies and an insightful editorial (”Medication Literacy Is a 2-Way Street”) that highlight why information therapy (Ix) is so valuable at the end of a hospital stay.

Kripalani et al found that, for patients with limited literacy skills discharged for acute coronary syndrome, 22% had not filled their prescriptions and 21% had difficulty understanding the purpose of the drugs prescribed to them. Maniaci et al studied well-educated patients discharged from an internal medicine hospital ward with at least one new medication prescribed. This study found that, 1-2 weeks post-discharge, 14% were unaware of being given a new medicine. Much worse were the percentages of patients that could recall the name (64%), dosage (56%) or purpose (64%) of the drugs.

It’s clear that providers are not doing an adequate job of ensuring that patients are leaving the hospital with the information they need to manage their recovery effectively. But it’s largely not due clinician error; rather, it’s that little has been done to integrate that information transfer into the care delivery process–especially at critical moments in care such as the discharge process.

That’s why Ix is so critical to ensuring that discharged patients can recover to better health and reduce the chances of being readmitted. Innovative Ix leaders from around the country will be sharing best practices on how to change care delivery to meet patients’ information needs at the 7th Annual Conference. Please join us June 12-13 in Washington, DC to get engaged in this critical element of patient-centered care delivery redesign.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Health Literacy, Hospital Discharge, Patient-Clinician Relationship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.