Functional health literacy and the risk of hospital admission among Medicare managed care enrollees.

OBJECTIVES This study analyzed whether inadequate functional health literacy is an independent risk factor for hospital admission. METHODS We studied a prospective cohort of 3260 Medicare managed care enrollees. RESULTS Of the participants, 29.5% were hospitalized. The crude relative risk (RR) of hospitalization was higher for individuals with inadequate literacy (n = 800; RR = 1.43; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.24, 1.65) and marginal literacy (n = 366; RR = 1.33; 95% CI = 1.09, 1.61) than for those with adequate literacy (n = 2094). In multivariate analysis, the adjusted relative risk of hospital admission was 1.29 (95% CI = 1.07, 1.55) for individuals with inadequate literacy and 1.21 (95% CI = 0.97, 1.50) for those with marginal literacy. CONCLUSIONS Inadequate literacy was an independent risk factor for hospital admission among elderly managed care enrollees.

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