Press Release Date: October 30, 2007
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality (AHRQ) today announced two new tools to help pharmacies provide
better quality services to people with limited health literacy. The tools are titled,
Is Our Pharmacy Meeting Patients' Needs? A Pharmacy Health Literacy Assessment Tool
User's Guide and Strategies to Improve Communication between Pharmacy Staff
and Patients: A Training Program for Pharmacy Staff.
Studies have found that people with limited health literacy are 12 to 18 times
more likely to be unable to identify their own medications and distinguish
them from one another than people who are more health literate. They
also have difficulty understanding simple instructions, such as taking a medication
every 6 hours, or how their medications work. People with limited health
literacy also are less likely to understand potential side effects and more
likely to misinterpret drug warning labels.
"Ensuring that people with limited health literacy understand how to take
their medications safely is key to improving the quality of health care and
reducing medical errors," said AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D.
"Pharmacists play an important role in this effort, and these new tools will
help them help their patients."
The tools resulted from a study that was co-funded by AHRQ and the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation and were developed under contract by Emory University.
The pharmacy assessment tool can help raise pharmacy staff awareness of health
literacy issues, detect barriers that may prevent individuals with limited
literacy skills from using and understanding health information provided by
a pharmacy, and may help identify opportunities for improving services. This
tool includes a pharmacy assessment tour to be completed by trained, objective
auditors; a survey to be completed by pharmacy staff; and a guide for
focus groups with pharmacy patients. The three parts are complementary and
are designed to form a comprehensive assessment.
The training program for pharmacy staff includes the use of explanatory slides
and small group breakout discussions. Participants will role play using handouts
before concluding with a question-and-answer session.
More than a third of adult Americans have levels of health literacy that are
below what is required to understand typical medication information, according
to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. This problem is more
acute for certain groups, including the elderly, minorities, immigrants, and
the poor. AHRQ's 2006 National Healthcare Disparities Report
(http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nhdr06/nhdr06.htm)
found that these same groups tend to have poorer health care, suggesting that
limited health literacy may be at least partially responsible for the disparities.
Is Our Pharmacy Meeting Patients' Needs? A Pharmacy Health
Literacy Assessment Tool User's Guide can be found online at
http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/pharmlit/. Printed copies may be obtained by calling
the AHRQ Publications Clearinghouse at (800) 358-9295 or sending an E-mail to
ahrqpubs@ahrq.hhs.gov.
Strategies to Improve Communication between Pharmacy Staff and Patients: A
Training Program for Pharmacy Staff can be found at
http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/pharmlit/pharmtrain.htm.
For more information about AHRQ's health literacy activities, go to
http://www.ahrq.gov/browse/hlitix.htm.
Internet Citation:
New AHRQ Tools Help Pharmacies Better Serve Patients With Limited Health Literacy. Press Release, October 30, 2007. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/news/press/pr2007/pharmtoolpr.htm