The more informed your employees are about health and healthcare, the wiser and more confident they’ll be when it comes to making the right lifestyle and healthcare choices.
Health Literacy
Health literacy improves health outcomes, while controlling health spending. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) defines it as:
“the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.”
What does the IOM mean by “basic health information”? It’s the knowledge necessary to understand the impacts and risks of different health-related decisions or behaviors. For example, basic health information would include knowing why you should complete the full dosage of antibiotics prescribed by a doctor.
However, an even more informed healthcare consumer would know, or at least ask, whether antibiotics are even necessary for the ailment in question.
The Low Health Literacy Rate
Health literacy is very low in the U.S. – “proficiency” is pegged at 12% by the Journal of the American Medical Association, well below the level of other nations where citizens have access to technology.
According to JAMA, having a “proficient” level of health literacy can mean making consistently good healthcare choices and understanding one’s insurance options. Yet, mere proficiency should not be the goal. At Quizzify, where employees are already “proficient,” we continue to learn something every day. For instance, today we learned that pregnant women should avoid consuming black licorice because it contains a chemical that can harm unborn babies. (In this situation, it’s the high-quality candy-store licorice that is the culprit. The version you buy at newsstands is only licorice-flavored.)
See also: New Wellness Plans: for Employee Finances
Low Health Literacy Affects Cost
A study conducted by the Veterans Administration (VA) on the literacy-cost correlation revealed that veterans with low health literacy spend roughly 50% more on disease management and medical care than veterans with proficient knowledge, other things equal. Think about what that means for your own healthcare budget, and how much you would save by making even a small dent in that.
Low Health-Literacy Affects Employee Wellness Outcomes
Health literacy training has far better outcomes than any other employee wellness program. Screenings, for example, do not prevent the utilization of medical care. In fact, they may actually encourage it.
In the Health Enhancement Research Organization Outcomes Guidebook, researchers found that only 7-8% of hospitalizations are “potentially preventable” by wellness programs. They also note that many non-hospital expenses increase as a result of these programs. Meanwhile health literacy applies to the vast majority of decisions and behaviors that affect health.
In contrast, health literacy applies to the vast majority of decisions and behaviors that affect health. Typically, literate consumers spend less. When literate consumers spend more, it is usually an educated decision and may avoid a bad outcome.
Implementing Health Literacy Into the Workplace
The Uphill Battle Toward Behavior Change:
People who are smokers or overweight already realize they should make changes…and yet, for many complex and (in the case of obesity) poorly understood biochemical reasons, can’t. Encouraging smokers to quit or obese employees to lose weight is a totally uphill, probably unwinnable task for an employer, even as a lot of money gets spent trying to move the needle. It is nearly impossible to make significant dents in these two (and related) health issues through behavior change. Furthermore, employers are not especially well-positioned to bring about these changes. Trying too hard can even feel intrusive and uncomfortable for employees.
Knowledge as a Solution:
By contrast, in health literacy, most of the effort is in imparting the knowledge, not changing the behavior.
Examples:
- Every smoker knows he or she is supposed to quit already for health reasons but doesn’t. However, a few smokers may be motivated to quit when they learn the amount of money they are really spending on cigarettes. ($300,000-plus over a lifetime.)
- People know that radiation is unhealthy, whereas very few patients receiving CT scans realize they will be absorbing as much as 1000 times the radiation of an X-ray. Simply obtaining the knowledge can change behavior while saving money.
