Assessing and addressing low health literacy among surgical outpatients.

Patients with low health literacy do not have the ability to read, understand, and use health information to make appropriate health decisions. There is a high incidence of low health literacy in the United States, and health care practitioners in outpatient surgical centers need to be aware of this problem and take steps toward addressing it. Tools for assessing health literacy are available, and health care practitioners should use these tools to incorporate an assessment of health literacy into their preoperative patient assessments.