Economic Cost of Health Illiteracy for Blacktown Hospital Blacktown-Mt Druitt Health Medical Staff Council: Report 2

This is the second report on the Economic Cost of Health Illiteracy for Blacktown Hospital. This document contains two sections: an introduction and a methods and analysis. Health literacy (HL) is defined as the skills, knowledge, motivation, and capacity of a person to access, understand, appraise and apply information to make effective decisions about health and health care and take appropriate action (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, 2014) (3). Patients with a greater level of HL report better clinical and hospital outcomes (11, 12). On the contrary, low level of HL, in other words, ‘health illiteracy’ is not only associated with significant health burden at individual and community level but also results in economic ramifications at practice and health care system levels.