Abstracts Am J Gastroenterol 2014; 109:S629–S680; doi:10.1038/ajg.2014.280
OUTCOMES RESEARCH
2170 A Point of Care Evaluation of Health Literacy in a Suburban GI Clinic Azfar Niazi, MBBS, Omar Khokhar, MD, FACG. Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, University of Illinois-Peoria, Bloomington, IL. Introduction: Health literacy is defined as the ability to obtain, process, and understand basic information needed to make appropriate health decisions. Health literacy has a major impact on the improvement of quality of healthcare. In 2005, a tool was introduced to assess health literacy called new vital sign by Weiss et al. Since then, it has been validated in multiple studies. It is usually administered by an RN or MOA, and takes about 3 minutes to complete. It assesses general literacy and numeracy skills as applied to health information yielding an overall estimate of health literacy. We aimed to assess health literacy in an outpatient community GI clinic. Methods: We enrolled 175 consecutive patients in an ambulatory GI setting. The new vital sign was administered by a medical student after standard vital signs were obtained. Exclusion criteria were
OUTCOMES RESEARCH
2170 A Point of Care Evaluation of Health Literacy in a Suburban GI Clinic Azfar Niazi, MBBS, Omar Khokhar, MD, FACG. Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, University of Illinois-Peoria, Bloomington, IL. Introduction: Health literacy is defined as the ability to obtain, process, and understand basic information needed to make appropriate health decisions. Health literacy has a major impact on the improvement of quality of healthcare. In 2005, a tool was introduced to assess health literacy called new vital sign by Weiss et al. Since then, it has been validated in multiple studies. It is usually administered by an RN or MOA, and takes about 3 minutes to complete. It assesses general literacy and numeracy skills as applied to health information yielding an overall estimate of health literacy. We aimed to assess health literacy in an outpatient community GI clinic. Methods: We enrolled 175 consecutive patients in an ambulatory GI setting. The new vital sign was administered by a medical student after standard vital signs were obtained. Exclusion criteria were
