Rehabilitation Consumers' Use and Understanding of Quality Information: A Health Literacy Perspective

Objectives: To explore consumers' use and understanding of quality information about postacute rehabilitation facilities. Design: Thematic, semistructured interviews. Setting: Two skilled nursing facilities and 2 inpatient rehabilitation facilities in a large Midwestern city. Participants: Rehabilitation inpatients (n=17) with stroke, hip fractures, and joint replacements and care partners (n = 12) of rehabilitation inpatients. Intervention: None. Main Outcome Measure: None. Results: Health literacy imposed barriers to participants' understanding of quality information. Using the Institute of Medicine's Health Literacy Framework, we identified specific barriers that limited participants' abilities to (1) obtain quality information, (2) process and understand quality information, and (3) make appropriate decisions about the quality of a rehabilitation facility. Participants tended to rely on informal and nonquality information when choosing a rehabilitation facility. Conclusions: Given the barriers imposed by low health literacy, rehabilitation providers have a responsibility to present quality information in a way that consumers, especially those with low health literacy, can use and understand.