October is health literacy month. There’s no better time to shed light on the fact that one-third of our patients leave the hospital after surgery not knowing how to safely recover at home. These patients are primed for worse outcomes compared to patients with higher health literacy scores.

Furthermore, a study published in the November issue of the Journal of Arthroplasty detected an average 12th grade reading level across more than 100 patient education articles on hip and knee replacement. This far exceeds the recommended 6th grade level.

At STREAMD, our emphasis has always been on clear, short, and conversational communication. We aree very proud thaat Readability scored STREAMD a grade ‘A’, ranking our text messages at a 6th grade reading level, according to the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level formula.

Home-based recovery is a complex system. Patients are seeing many changes to their bodies that they’ve never experienced before and even the most educated people have trouble understanding what’s normal or expected. When systems are complex, there’s a tendency to engineer complex solutions. What’s needed, however, are simple solutions. That’s always been our focus with STREAMD.

We couldn’t be prouder to stand behind a solution that will work for all patients, regardless of the phone they have or their education level.

Curious what your instructions would look like as a series of text messages? Send them over to us and let us help.