engleski

Economic implications of insufficient health literacy

The goal of this paper is to evaluate the level of health literacy and to investigate its relationship, not only with personal, socio- economic and socio-demographic variables, but also with variables that indicate the patients’ perception of accessibility of the public healthcare services. For the purpose of this research, S–TOFHLA was translated into the Croatian language and nonparametric statistical testing (Kruskal-Wallis) was conducted. Results confirm the existence of a relationship between HL and level of perceived easiness in receiving professional advice and reference by GPs and understanding instructions on taking medicament(s). Because the inadequate HL and poor accessibility of the public healthcare services has negative implications to the public healthcare spending, research on the factors influencing the populations’ HL directly contributes to better understanding the economic effects of the level of HL.

health literacy ; information asymmetry ; public healthcare costs ; S-TOFHLA

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