CATALYST, Center for the Advancement of Team Science, Analytics, and Systems Thinking, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States.
Department of Family and Community Medicine, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States.
Appl Clin Inform. 2022 May;13(3):692-699. doi: 10.1055/s-0042-1751239. Epub 2022 Jul 6.
The objective of this study is to investigate the relationships between health literacy and numeracy (HLN) and patient portal use, measured in inpatient and outpatient settings.
Using data collected as part of a pragmatic randomized controlled trial conducted across the inpatient population of a U.S.-based academic medical center, the present study evaluated the relationships between patients' perceptions of health literacy and their skills, interpreting medical information with metrics of engagement with patient portals.
Self-reported levels of HLN for patients in the study sample ( = 654) were not significantly associated with inpatient portal use as measured by frequency of use or the number of different inpatient portal functions used. Use of the outpatient version of the portal over the course of 6 months following hospital discharge was also not associated with HLN. A subsequent assessment of patients after 6 months of portal use postdischarge (response rate 40%) did not reveal any differences with respect to portal use and health numeracy; however, a significant increase in self-reported levels of health literacy was found at this point.
While previous studies have suggested that low HLN might represent a barrier to inpatient portal adoption and might limit engagement with outpatient portals, we did not find these associations to hold. Our findings, however, suggest that the inpatient setting may be effective in facilitating technology acceptance. Specifically, the introduction of an inpatient portal made available on hospital-provided tablets may have practical implications and contribute to increased adoption of patient-facing health information technology tools.
本研究旨在调查健康素养和算术能力（HLN）与患者门户使用之间的关系，这些关系在住院和门诊环境中进行了测量。
本研究使用作为美国学术医疗中心住院人群进行的实用随机对照试验的一部分收集的数据，评估了患者对健康素养和技能的看法与他们使用患者门户的参与度指标之间的关系，以解释医疗信息。
研究样本（n=654）中患者的自我报告 HLN 水平与使用频率或使用的不同住院门户功能数量来衡量的住院门户使用没有显著关联。在出院后 6 个月内使用门诊版门户的情况也与 HLN 无关。在出院后 6 个月对患者进行的后续门户使用评估（响应率为 40%）并未显示在门户使用和健康算术方面存在任何差异；然而，此时发现自我报告的健康素养水平显著提高。
尽管先前的研究表明，低 HLN 可能代表住院患者门户采用的障碍，并可能限制对门诊门户的参与，但我们没有发现这些关联成立。然而，我们的研究结果表明，住院环境可能有助于促进技术接受。具体而言，在医院提供的平板电脑上提供住院门户可能具有实际意义，并有助于增加面向患者的健康信息技术工具的采用。
