Assessment of Organizational Health Literacy in a Group of Public, Private and University Hospitals in Istanbul

The aim of our study was to investigate and compare organizational health literacy in a group of public, private and university hospitals in Istanbul. This cross-sectional study was conducted in a group of hospitals (n=30) in Istanbul, Turkey. An Organizational Health Literacy Observation (OHLO) form was filled for each of the 30 hospitals (10 public, 10 university and 10 private hospitals) by researchers. Six managers from each hospital (n=180) filled the Turkish version of The Health Literate Health Care Organization 10 item Questionnaire (HLHO-10) during face-to-face OHLO and HLHO-10 scores were highest in private hospitals and lowest in university hospitals, but the difference between the hospitals was not statistically significant. (p=0.18 and p = 0.45 respectively). There was a positive correlation between observation (OHLO) scores and manager evaluation (HLHO-10) scores in private hospitals and this correlation is statistically significant (r = 0.668, p=0.035). There was a negative correlation in the public and university hospitals. However the correlation coefficient was not statistically significant (r=-0.310, p=0.384 and r=-0.118, p=0.746 respectively). According to mean scores of HLHO-10 items, "Provide access" has the highest score. "Integration", "High-risk" and "Costs" followed this item. "Provide Access" has the highest score in both university and public hospitals and “Costs” got the highest score in private hospitals. When the differences between hospitals for each item of the HLHO-10 are analyzed, the "Health literacy skills range" and "Costs" items were found to be statistically significant (“p” values= 0.011 and 0.018 respectively). Post hoc analyses indicated that there was a significant difference between public and private hospitals for the “Health literacy skills range” item while the difference between university and private hospitals was significant for the “Costs” item. Private hospitals got the highest and university hospitals the lowest mean scores for both of the OHLO and HLHO-10 questionnaires. The high literacy of the public hospitals for individualized health information and the private hospitals’ about out-of-pocket payments are normal and expected findings