Healthcare Documents: How Readable? A Study of Simple Strategies to Decrease Reading Grade Level and Increase Reading Ease of Healthcare Documents

The field of healthcare is becoming more aware of the need for patients to be able understand the consent forms we provide. Health literacy is often defined as the ability to read, understand, and act correctly on health information. Health literacy surveys have consistently shown that about 24% of the population cannot read at the 5th grade level. About 66% of the population can read at the 6 th grade level. It is for this reason that the target grade level for most newspapers and lay periodicals is set at a goal of a 6 th grade reading level. [1-2] How can one study the reading level and reading ease of a document? A well-known formula for determining the reading grade level of a document is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Score (FKGS). The Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES) is a well-known formula for determining reading ease. One advantage of these two tests is that they are both available on a widely-available word processing platform.