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The Online appendix presents item performance for each of the med guides examined. Mean comprehension total score and subcategory scores are detailed in Table 2, also by literacy level. In general, patients had a hard time comprehending the med guides, with a mean total score of 52.7 (SD = 22.6). This was also true for each subcategory score. Participants with lower literacy consistently demonstrated poorer understanding of all med guides content, with increasing, gradient trends noted in total and subcategory comprehension scores across low, marginal, and adequate literacy levels.

In multivariable analysis controlling for all demographic and socioeconomic variables, including literacy and prior experience with med guides, low and marginal literacy were independently associated with a poorer comprehension of med guides (β = –14.3, 95 % CI –18.0 – –10.6, p < 0.001; low: β = –23.7, 95 % CI –28.3 – –19.0, p < 0.001, Table 3). Other risk factors included older age, black race, and less education. Interactions with age, literacy, and other variables were tested and none were significant.

Available med guides fall below the threshold of acceptable standards for patient print materials set by both professional societies and the federal government. Despite a nearly eight-fold increase in the past five years in the number of drugs required by the FDA to have a med guide (from 40 in 2006 to 305 as of September 2011),25 little to no improvement has been made in their readability and accessibility. We confirmed the inadequacy of med guides in a representative sample of primary care patients, who had considerable difficulty comprehending basic information from print med guides even while viewing the material and given adequate time to respond. This is a serious concern, as med guides are frequently the only means that patients have for receiving critical information on how to safely use higher risk drugs. The extent to which patients across all literacy levels did not understand any aspect of the med guides demonstrates that they are too complex to be useful. This might explain why patients in prior studies reported not reviewing consumer medication information, and why the majority in our study had never heard of med guides.12,26–28

The Plain Writing Act of 2010 mandates that federal agencies, including the FDA, communicate to the public in a clear, understandable manner free of unclarified jargon.29 What this new federal law does not state is how to determine whether this has been achieved. The Department of Health and Human Services and experts in health literacy are often inconsistent when defining a threshold for readability of print documentation. Some recommend an 8th grade level or below,14 while others have sought targets as low as below a 4th grade reading level.30 Adding to the confusion are more recent debates on the utility of reading formulas.17 Most experts agree that readability assessments are important within a more comprehensive evaluation of consumer materials. An operational set of standards for guiding government and industry in best practices for designing print materials like med guides, and thereby offering a means to assess these communications in the future, are urgently needed. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is now leading an effort to set these standards.31

As in previous studies examining comprehension of print health materials,32 we found that individuals with lower literacy were significantly less able to navigate and retrieve information, and make inferences to support safe and appropriate use of a medicine than those in higher literacy groups. Also, older age and less education were independently linked to poorer comprehension. These findings, when considering other failed sources of spoken communication and prescription labeling elucidated in previous research,33–35 convey the urgency for evidence-based approaches to the re-design of med guides.

Our study has limitations. Study 2 participants were recruited from two diverse settings; however eligibility did not require current or prior experiences with the medicines discussed in our assessment. Patients may be more attentive to the task of reviewing the content and responding to our comprehension questions if they were actually taking these prescriptions. We also were only able to evaluate comprehension of three representative med guides. A prior study by our team found that readability of print material, as measured by Lexile score, was a strong predictor of comprehension.34 With only three med guides, we could not adequately assess the relationship between Lexile score and readability. We also only included English-speaking patients. Future research should closely examine the availability and quality of med guides in other languages, as Limited English Proficiency and poor quality translations of health materials have previously been implicated as risk factors to inadequate understanding of medication regimens.36–38

Given the attention med guides have received from the FDA, the Brookings Institution and the pharmaceutical industry in response to REMS, there is a current push to improve them and seek out a single-document solution for providing medication information. This could end the redundancy in, confusion about, and lack of awareness of med guides and other leaflets. Our findings strongly suggest a need for the med guide program’s revision. Future improvements might begin with evidence-based readability standards and an explanation of the purpose of med guides included in the material. Providing a summary that highlights ‘need-to-know’ content could be a way of limiting and layering information in such a way that patients can self-tailor the amount of knowledge they wish to obtain about their prescription. All options should be considered for informing patients at all literacy levels on how to safely and appropriately use medication.

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