Lorraine S. Wallace|Edwin S. Rogers|Steven E. Roskos|David Holiday|Barry D. Weiss
Brief Report: screening items to identify patients with limited health literacy skills
University of Tennessee at Knoxville|Alcoa (United States)|University of Tennessee at Knoxville|Alcoa (United States)|University of Tennessee at Knoxville|Alcoa (United States)|RTI International|University of Arizona
patients limited literacy skills routinely encountered clinical practice always identified cliniciansto evaluate 3 candidate questions determine accuracy identifying patients limited marginal health literacy skillswe studied 305 englishspeaking adults attending universitybased primary care clinic demographic items health literacy screening questions rapid estimate adult literacy medicine realm administered patients determine accuracy candidate questions identifying limited marginal health literacy skills plotted area receiver operating characteristic auroc curves item using realm scores reference standardthe mean age subjects 495 675 female 852 caucasian 813 insured tenncare andor medicare fiftyfour 177 limited 52 170 marginal health literacy skills one screening question confident filling medical forms accurate detecting limited auroc 082 95 confidence interval ci077 086 limitedmarginal auroc 079 95 ci074 083 health literacy skills question significantly greater auroc either questions p01 also greater auroc questions based demographic characteristicsone screening question may sufficient detecting limited marginal health literacy skills clinic populations