A Retrospective Review of a Local Healthcare Process Designed to Improve Understandability, Actionability, and Readability of Written Documents for Veterans

Preventable chronic diseases are plaguing our veterans. Health literacy is an important component of prevention and chronic disease self-management. People need health literacy skills to read and understand information. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) calls the Veterans Health Education and Information (VHEI) Committee for a review process to improve the understandability, actionability, and readability of VHEI resources. This retrospective review of a local evidence-based process improvement is being implemented at the Washington DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center (DCVAMC) to satisfy a VHA directive to improve the understandability, actionability, and readability of written materials. The local process improvement involves a robust education administered thru a four-cycle Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) framework by the VHEI Coordinator to the committee responsible for approving written patient education documents for publication within the facility. The purpose of this project is to review and analyze the documents produced by this process improvement and to evaluate its effectiveness. Project questions will be answered using the appropriate statistical test to determine 1) if there was any significant difference between the real written documents and the historical written documents on the Understandability and Actionability domains as measured on the PEMAT-P, 2) if there was a significant difference between the real written documents and the historical documents on the Flesch Reading Ease scores, 3) if there was a significant difference between the real written documents and the historical documents on the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, and 4) if there were any significant improvements in Committee member’s confidence or self-efficacy scores in reviewing written documents. This initiative will expectedly satisfy the VHA mandate for improving the understandability, actionability, and readability of documents by implementing a review and approval process. Additionally, it is also expected to demonstrate the Committee’s increased perceived self-efficacy to review and provide feedback on written documents as a sustainable review process.https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/gradposters2023_healthsciences/1012/thumbnail.jp