Health Literacy on Healthcare Delivery

Health literacy is on the rise because of consumer empowerment initiatives aimed at creating awareness on healthcare options and services. These initiatives enable healthcare clients to have an understanding of how they can better their health status, and to have an upper hand in decision making on what services they receive. Increasing consumer empowerment on health issues has both positive and negative influences on healthcare delivery.

Improved population health

High health literacy has a long-term positive effect on the health status of the population. The people will be able to live desirable lifestyles that promote health and make proper use of available prophylactic measures. This reduces the morbidity of various health conditions, thus providing better health outcomes for health services delivered.

Reduced healthcare costs

An improvement in the health of the population results in reduced expenditure on healthcare services. The number of healthcare priorities will reduce and thus lower healthcare costs. 

Increased effectiveness of care

Proper treatment accompanied by proper management of a condition by a client, is likely to result to recovery or improvement of the health status of the client. Achievement of this is possible with a health literate client on the condition under care. Health illiteracy usually leads to mismanagement of health conditions by clients, making the conditions worse or recurring. With the increasing number of drug resistant infections, effectiveness of treatment is a very crucial element in healthcare delivery.

Quality of care

Client empowerment on health issues is very important in ensuring provision of quality healthcare services. With health literacy, clients have an understanding of what services they need and at what standards. This makes providers to strive to provide quality services.

Litigation issues

Client empowerment is making healthcare delivery more challenging when it comes to issues like patient autonomy and other ethical issues. There is increasing cases of litigation on healthcare providers on various aspects of care especially touching on healthcare ethics. These issues bring in a conflict of interest on whether to provide care at the interest of the client, at the interest of the public, or at the interest of the professional requirements.

Self medication

Health literacy has given some people the perception that they can handle several conditions on their own without consulting a physician. This attitude is increasing the cases of self medication which may result to negative outcomes as will be discussed here soon.

Health literacy is generally important in the generation of desirable healthcare outcomes. There is need for investment in health literacy for better long-term population health status, reduced healthcare costs, increased effectiveness, and quality of healthcare.