Health Literacy: Learn How to Find and Use Health Information

SUMMARY
As a contractor for Medicare, Kepro serves as the Beneficiary and Family Centered Care Quality Improvement Organization, also referred to as a BFCC-QIO. While Kepro provides BFCC-QIO services in 29 states, the general information is relevant to everyone who has Medicare (including Medicare Advantage) and everyone who works with people who have Medicare.

This episode is a conversation with our guest, Dr. Jessica Whitley, Chief Medical Officer from Kepro.

In this podcast, Dr. Whitley will share information about health literacy. She will give some tips on how to gather health information as well as sharing about disease prevention. There is also a summary of her advice: obtain, communicate, process, understand, and use with regard to health information.

For more information about Kepro BFCC-QIO, please visit www.keproqio.com.

KEY TOPICS

00:29: Overview, introduction of guest, Dr. Jessica Whitley
 02:22: What is health literacy?
 05:23: How to gather health information
 17:07: Summarizing Dr. Whitley’s advice
 19:28: Prevention
 25:55: Final thoughts

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RESOURCES

BFCC-QIO Information for stakeholders: www.keproqio.com/partners

BFCC-QIO Information for people who have Medicare: www.keproqio.com/bene

Links Dr. Whitley noted:

Health literacy tools from the University of Maryland: www.guides.hshsl.umaryland.edu

Questions to ask your doctor and other tools to help you to be more involved with your care:
www.ahrq.gov/patients-consumers/patient-involvement


Music: Motivational Upbeat Corporate by RinkevichMusic
https://soundcloud.com/rinkevichmusic
Video Link: https://youtu.be/U78mgVaM12M

Transcript

Welcome to Aging Health Matters, a podcast from Kepro, a Beneficiary and Family Centered Care Quality Improvement Organization. We plan to cover healthcare topics for the Medicare population. Information in today’s show may help you or someone you know in their healthcare journey. Thanks for joining us. Now let’s get started.

Scott Fortin   
 Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of our podcast Aging Health Matters. This is Scott Fortin, Senior Director of Communications and Outreach for Kepro. And I'm here to introduce today's topic. As a reminder, being the QIO for 29 states, we have three key services for people who have Medicare: appeals, quality of care complaints, and Immediate Advocacy services. More information on these topics is available on our website, and that information is also available in the Show Notes.
 So today, with October being Health Literacy Month, we'll be talking with our honored guest, Dr. Jessica Whitley, who is the Chief Medical Officer for Kepro's QIO program, about how Medicare beneficiaries can improve their health literacy.
 So Dr. Whitley, how you doing today?

 Jessica Whitley   
 I'm doing well Scott. How are you?

 Scott Fortin   
 I'm doing great. Well, welcome back. I know we've had you on a time or two previously. Always appreciate you being on here. So we'll give those that may have missed some of our previous podcasts a little bit of background on you. I know that you are a practicing medical doctor besides being our Chief Medical Officer, so if you could just tell the folks a little bit about yourself here in a couple of minutes, and then we'll break into our topic.

 Jessica Whitley   
 Absolutely. Yes. So although I am the full time Chief Medical Officer for Kepro's BFCC-QIO contract with Medicare, I do still dabble a little bit in clinical medicine. That is definitely my most valuable skill, to be able to take care of patients. I am a board-certified Internal Medicine physician, but I focus on the care of the hospitalized patient, so I'm really passionate about patients and about patients being able to be a part of the care team and about helping patients to understand what they can do to make sure they don't end up in the hospital with somebody like me taking care of them.

Scott Fortin   

Absolutely. Well, and I do know that as a primary part of your interest is explaining to people a little bit about their health and ways that they can be more mindful of that and improve on that. And that is part of our topic for today folks. That is health literacy. A little bit of some of this, personal health literacy, that's the degree to which individuals can apply and find and understand information. So Dr. Whitley, can you define health literacy a little bit more for us besides that very basic definition that I just quickly gave?

 Jessica Whitley   

And Scott, that was an excellent definition. Like an official definition is health literacy means you're the patient. And Scott, sometimes you may be a patient, so it could be you Scott too. Your ability as a patient to collect and understand your health information, so that you can make the best decision about your different unique health situations. So let's put that a little more simply.

 How do you know what's important to know about your health? How do you get information on that to help you to navigate and to better advocate for yourself  and to better help you to understand the things that you need to do to be a part of taking care of yourself? I always like to emphasize to patients. Doctors don't take care of you. You take care of you. Doctors are one of the tools that you use to help you take care of you, but you're the chief executive officer of your health. You are the president, the emperor, and the king that regulates what happens to you and what happens to your health.

And it's so important that patients see themselves as that. And so everything else is just kind of falling under you, and you have different tools that you will utilize to help you take better care of yourself. And a doctor is one of those tools. Another one of those tools is knowing how to collect information to help you understand what diseases you may have, to help you understand how to better communicate with your doctor, sometimes to help you understand how your health insurance works, and how to advocate for yourself when you're not getting certain things that you feel are needed to optimize your health. That whole process about how to find these things is what we term health literacy. But let's just put it on a simple level. Let's learn how to get the information that you need to take better care of yourself.

 Scott Fortin   
 OK. That makes great sense, and I know from talking to you in past podcasts in general, as we've talked in this topic in the past, with the amount of information that's out there, I know when you say gather information, it's good maybe if we can describe for our listeners a little bit how we can, how they can gather some of that and then, and also I think the thing that you have always stated clearly when it comes to health literacy in my mind is choices, and that's what people I think really are doing with this information and correct me if I'm wrong. They're looking at the plethora of information out there at their fingertips, and they're making good choices with it. I mean, is that a fair assessment?

 Jessica Whitley   
 Absolutely and in order to help make not only choices, but to also make sure that the advice that you're being given from any type of healthcare professionals or to have knowledge once you've been diagnosed with a particular medical condition, to make sure you have knowledge about that condition. And what do I need to do, and what can I bring to my lifestyle, or what do I need to talk to my doctor about? What do I need to keep track of to make sure that I can optimize my health? This information that you gather, it's like the foundation to help you to be able to take care of yourself, and this information comes in a variety of forms.

You know it can come through conversations with your doctor. It can come through conversations with other patients who have similar health conditions. It can come through listening to a television program that's educating you about a certain condition. It can come from reading something in a magazine or reading something from the internet, but to your point, Scott, because there's so many various avenues that this information can come from, sometimes that can be very overwhelming for patients and the families and friends that help to take care of those patients.
 So that's definitely one of the things that I would like to focus on, helping patients and their families and their caregivers learn how to not get overwhelmed by the volume of information that's out there and how to understand that you don't have to get all of the information. You just have to get some of the important information that will assist you in taking better care of yourself.

 Scott Fortin   
 Wonderful. And I know as I mentioned at the start of that last question, there's so much information available for people. I mean things to consider for some of these folks include things like what is my insurance going to cover, exactly what's in my plan? What kind of healthcare needs are they going to have not just right now but in the future?

I mean I think back to my own health now versus a couple years ago. And there's been some changes, and I think what do I need to gather to know maybe where there's one condition that doesn't necessarily impact the other or sometimes it does? What decisions do people need to make overall to improve their health? I think those are all areas of information that you're talking about when you're looking at an everyday approach to someone being literate about their health. I mean is that correct?

 Jessica Whitley   
 That's absolutely correct. And just listening to you and even though I'm a trained clinician, there's a part of me that could even feel, wow, that could be overwhelming.
 So that's what I really want to emphasize to our audience. Yes, this can feel overwhelming. But what you do is you just take it one bite at a time. It's like that old cliche. How do you eat an elephant?

You eat the elephant one bite at a time, and you don't try to swallow the elephant all at once. For instance, I think one of the most important things is to improve communication with your doctor. And if you know what you want to get out of that communication with your doctor, that's a huge starting point to being able to better advocate for yourself and to better understand your health conditions.
 And that will help you to take better care of yourself. There is the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and it's like this organization, and it has the brightest minds in health care and public health. They come together, and they think of ways to try to help, and this is just one of the organizations that does that.

But they think of ways to help patients to navigate and participate in their health care, and that's one thing that I want to emphasize. Remember you are the boss of you, and you are the boss of your health. You have to lead those efforts. One of the campaigns that they came up with is called the Ask Me 3 campaign. Ask Me 3, and it's about good questions for your good health.

So it's three questions, and certainly this can, perhaps Scott we can provide a link to this, or you can simply put in an internet search, Ask Me 3. And it'll come up for you.
 But here are the three questions that they recommend that you always ask when you're speaking with somebody about your health, a clinician, a physician, or a doctor, if you're in an emergency room, if you have a new problem. So here are the three questions. You ask them. So what's my main problem? The second thing you ask them is what do I need to do about this problem? And the third question is why is it important for me to do this?

 Starting at a very it's not like a low level, but it's basic. It doesn't have to be complicated. Just getting into the practice of asking three questions really puts you leaps and bounds above most patients that are engaging in health care. There's a statistic that says only about 12% of all adults in the United States have good health literacy.
 
 So most people are just going into hospitals, going into their doctor's office, and  really kind of part of the culture that was prevalent a long time ago is that you just go to the doctor and you listen to your doctor, and you just do what your doctor says, and your doctor takes care of you. But we really want to get patients beyond that. And your doctor is a very, very important partner in your ability to be able to care for yourself. But your doctor is not the most important aspect of your care.

So we're going to shift that from having, let's put the doctor at the top to putting you at the top. So you have to know how to ask questions, how to talk to the doctor, and how to get the information that you need. Studies will also show that if you start to do this, it really significantly improves your health. And so that's what we want to start to give people.

This podcast, of course, is not going to give you everything you need to know, but it's going to give you a good start, starting to know what you need to know. I actually spent some time on the internet, Scott, and I put myself in the shoes of a patient. And I said, OK, what if I wanted to know how do I talk to my doctor, or how do I do this? And so in my own internet searches, and certainly this is not maybe the best answer for everybody. But let me just share with you one of the resources that I came across that really helped. It's a health literacy resource, and it has patient resources, and it's put out by the University of Maryland by their Health Sciences and Human Services library, and hopefully we can put this link up, but they have a variety of different sources that they give you.

 Scott Fortin   
 Sure.

 Jessica Whitley   
 Now, one of those sources, they provide you a link, and these are kind of like big titles of things, but they provide you a link to the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. And in this link, I thought it was really interesting. They have videos where they'll have a doctor that specializes in the treatment of diseases of the heart. And then this doctor will talk to patients. And they'll tell you these are the questions that I would ask my doctor.

They also had a video with a nurse practitioner that talked to patients about, hey, you should always bring a list of your questions to each visit. So I thought that their video library was a good place to just start to look at some things. You know, how do you do this as a patient? And that's just one resource that's out there. What I will say about how you don't get bogged down and overwhelmed because if you look at the internet, you'll see all kinds of different websites from all over the world. I think if you as a patient focus your efforts and look and limit your searches to websites that end in edu, gov, or org. These typically will lead you to websites that are giving you good information because not all information on the internet is accurate information. So you definitely want accurate information.

Scott Fortin   
 Right.

 Jessica Whitley   
 Another thing that I recognized when I was playing around on the internet is if you just put in health literacy, a lot of things that you will get will talk about how physicians or how nurses can help their patients improve their health literacy. But that's not really what you're looking for as a patient. So then I switched my search to
 how do I find out more about my diabetes, phrasing it with I want to learn about whatever health condition you have, and put that in. So  it helps to really bring you sources that speak to you at the level of a patient and that really aren't those resources that are talking to the physicians and other health caregivers.

 Scott Fortin   
 If I were to start to kind of encapsulate some of these and look at some of your advice, I know that you like me, as we've worked together through our time, Dr. Whitley and I both are people who like slogans or simple phrases. I think some of the things that come to mind, and I know in a previous podcast, we came up with some as well that hopefully helped our audience. And that's obtain, obtain that information, communicate with your family members and your providers. Process it. Don't just ignore it.

There's a lot of information that comes our way and understand. I mean I think sometimes one of the pieces of advice I know that you've given previously is repeating things back. And I think that that demonstrates good communication,
 clear understanding. And then use it obviously. Take what you've acquired and as you said, be proactive because we all are responsible for our own health.

And what your doctor gives you is advice, and that's what they've always termed it, as doctor’s advice, not orders necessarily. It's something that we all need to look at where the discerning eye, to say well, I looked this up, and this is more towards my condition maybe perhaps than what I thought before. So I guess when we're looking at that, I mean I hear you clearly when you say that the doctor in this and even the hospitals in this, for example, or nursing homes are a tool. They're a tool to you for your own health, but that you own this, and that your proactivity in learning and applying this information is really dependent upon you and your interest level in how healthy you want to be. I mean correct?

 Jessica Whitley   
 You really hit the nail on the head, and I always like the way you summarize because I can be a little windy, especially on topics that I'm passionate about. We can talk about this for hours and hours. But I really like the way that you summarize. I don't even know if you remember what you said, but it was four words, right Scott, I think you said obtain, communicate, process, and understand.

 Scott Fortin   
 It was about five. Obtain. And use.

Jessica Whitley   
 And use it. There we go. And I tell you, everybody out there, if I were talking to one of my own family members, this is what I would tell them. As a patient myself,
 this is what I do. You can do it too. And trust me, it will help you to feel better.
 It will help you to live a more full and robust life because disease makes us feel not at ease. It's a heavy load to carry, and so whatever you can do to ease your burden of that disease, to control whatever illnesses you may have. Not only to control, a lot of health literacy also helps you to understand how to prevent certain illnesses.

 Scott Fortin   
 Yes.

 Jessica Whitley   
 So we don't always want to wait until we get some type of healthcare condition.
We want to learn what we need to do to prevent. Let’s prevent infection. Wash your hands. Let’s prevent heart disease. Get up and move, and put some of those vegetables. I know we like French fries. I like French fries like the rest of us, but we got to get those fruits and vegetables in, and we got to drink some water.

 Scott Fortin   
 Yes.

Jessica Whitley   
 So I mean, even if people just did certain those simple things. Just like I said, don't try to eat that elephant in one bite. Eat it piece by piece, and you will see those little pieces really make a big difference.

 Scott Fortin   
 Absolutely. I couldn't agree more, and I'll add this. When we're thinking prevention, there is also information on our website when it comes to immunizations.
 So that is something too. When you're considering a prevention, as we're getting into this fall time of the year throughout the United States here, we are having obvious changes in weather and things that disease that will affect people.
 So another part of prevention is to take a look at those immunizations, make sure you're up to date as we're getting into flu vaccines, for example, that you can get, and again, that is a another place for you to talk to your provider. I know every time I go to my provider I get offered a flu shot or whatever, and that is, as you say, your role and your proactive role in your own would be to say why yes doctor. Sure, I'll do that or explain to me why that would help me. So those are things I think that you've given us some real practical advice on to help our audience really kind of discern through just this ton of information that we get thrown at us every day. But I think breaking it down into smaller pieces as you have and just encouraging our audience to really kind of be, I guess, on point with their health would be what I would say are the biggest takeaways for us from today's podcast.

 Jessica Whitley   
 Absolutely. Scott, I'm glad that you touched on immunizations because there are a lot of people that have fear about immunizations. You can see that there's some information out there about immunizations that may make some people want to not take the immunizations. So I certainly always recommend for patients to get accurate information, and then once you get the accurate information and again websites,.edu.org.gov, and you can go on there, and you can read conflicting and opposing points, but you want to arm yourself with information, and you want to make the best decision for you. I can tell you that I do take the immunizations, and one of the things that my patients sometimes say, but they make me sick, they give me the disease. And the reason that a lot of patients say this is because what the immunization does is it introduces either a variant of virus or something that's been weakened, so that it doesn't make us really sick, but it helps our body to know how to recognize it. So then our body knows, oh if I see this, it's already armed and attacked to deal with it.

So when you get that immunization, your body does start to arm against that. And so a lot of the symptoms that we get, those symptoms reflect your body putting on their armor. You may get a mild fever, or you may feel achy, I don't ignore that. Patients are not kind of just making this up in your head. Yes, you may feel like that, but it is your body putting on your armor because if you get the part of the virus that's out there in the world, and you don't have any armor ready to attack it, then it could end up making you really, really sick. And that's what vaccines are trying to prevent.

They don't prevent you from getting the flu. They don't prevent you from getting COVID, but what they're designed to do is to prevent you from getting really sick from the flu or really sick from COVID, and you know we've made a big difference in the number of patients that are dying from COVID through immunizations. But I don't want to make this. I'm sure we could have a podcast about immunizations. You see how we just can talk about all kinds of things, but it is important for patients to understand these things. Go out and read about it.

 Scott Fortin   
 Yes.

 Jessica Whitley   
 Don't take my word for it. Go out and read about that, and if you have problems with reading, your doctor can help you, or there are other places that you can call, and we can put some of those resources on the website and say, hey, I need some information on, whatever you may need information on, and they can help you. They can talk to you about it. So it doesn't always have to be through reading because I know there's some people that this stuff trying to read it can be very confusing.

They're all kind of resources out there to help you to understand more about how to promote your health.

 Scott Fortin   
 Absolutely. And Dr. Whitley, I think you just brought us right back to our main point, and that is to obtain. We here at Kepro and on our podcast and with our website, we have a lot of videos. We have a lot of various information that you can gather whether it's about how to how to use our services, how to talk to your doctor, how to find out information about immunizations. It's all on that website, and we do link to various websites like Medicare and others, so if you are a video person, we do have videos. We do have again an email newsletter that I'll talk about here in a second as we close, but these are all great things Dr. Whitley that you've brought to us, and I really am appreciative of all of the information and all the time that you take with our audience to get this information out to them. So thank you very much.

Jessica Whitley   
 Oh, it's truly my pleasure and my honor.

 Scott Fortin   
 And again if you would like more information about our services, please feel free to sign up for that newsletter, either our provider or stakeholder or beneficiary newsletter as well as subscribe to our YouTube channel for those videos. Our helpline phone number as well as a link to our website to sign up for that newsletter will be available in the Show Notes. We're also going to take a look to try and get those links that Dr.  Whitley mentioned into the Show Notes as well.

But for you, our listeners, I thank you for listening, and I would ask you to keep a podcast in the future on your radar, on your calendar, and stay tuned for our next episode of Aging Health Matters. We're going to be covering a lot of good topics that are applicable to you all, whether it's as we've done in the past and if you haven't, please go back and visit some of those past ones, Area Agencies on Aging, senior health insurance providers, people that can help you to better understand your health and to better connect with us if you need anything. So please go to that website for more information. It has many links on there for our phone numbers, signing up for various information, and it will all be also available in our Show Notes.
 So with that, Dr. Whitley once again, thank you so much. And I hope that everyone out there in podcast land has a great day. Take care. Bye bye.