Assessing Text Characteristics of Electronic Discharge Summaries and their Implications for Patient Readability

A Discharge Summary provides critical information to patients for managing their post-discharge care. This study analyzes the characteristics of a corpus of Electronic Discharge Summaries (EDSs) with respect to content and readability of its sections in terms of text length and grade level complexity, use of abbreviations and noun phrase complexity based on the Open Access Consumer Health Vocabulary. We find that the Advice to Patient section has acceptable readability but is brief, and does not tend to lengthen in proportion to the Clinical Management section of the EDS. Conversely, the Clinical Management section, while acceptable by traditional readability measures, has a higher density of abbreviations than Advice to Patient and considerable density of noun phrases that are unlikely to be understood by consumers. If patients are intended to be a primary audience of the EDS, then efforts should be made to improve readability for ordinary health consumers.