When Positive is Negative: Health Literacy Barriers to Patient Access to Clinical Laboratory Test Results

Health literacy is a multidimensional set of skills (e.g., narrative, numeracy, digital, medication) that patients need to access and understand health information timely and accurately to make evidence-based informed decisions.

Multiple barriers prevent patients from effectively interacting with health information. The most salient barriers are poor overall health literacy skills and linguistic proficiency in English. As patients prefer direct access to laboratory test results, especially those of routine tests, contextualization and provider-directed interpretation of results are required to foster shared decision-making to address their healthcare issues and improve health outcomes.

The use of systematic approaches that account for poor health literacy skills and include culturally and linguistically appropriate planning and availability of resources is warranted at individual and population health levels (e.g., human-centered design of patient portals).