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CHN Newsletter

CHN Launches Health Literacy Initiative

Helping Patients Understand Medical Information to Improve Health Outcomes
Medical information is often complicated and confusing. When patients don’t properly understand information and instructions provided by their doctors and nurses, it leads to poor health outcomes and drives up health-related costs.

CHN is on the way to solving this problem for our more than 75,000 patients through our newly-launched Health Literacy Initiative.

The initiative includes training staff on using plain language in their interactions with patients. Additionally, our new Patient Communications Committee regularly reviews print materials given to patients to ensure that they simply and clearly convey important information.

Our Health Literacy Initiative is also having an impact beyond the walls of our 11 clinics. The New York State Department of Health recently turned to us for guidance on improving its consent form, after our analysis of the form revealed that its language was well beyond the comprehension of the average reader.