Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell:
Most medical schools don’t spend much, if any, time teaching their students how to cope with low-literacy patients, and most doctors aren’t particularly adept at detecting reading problems “” or knowing what to do when they identify someone who can’t read. And with the specter of “pay for performance,” in which doctors’ reimbursement will be tied to meeting certain quality goals, there is concern that physicians will shun low-literacy patients, seeing them as too tough to treat.
