How long does it take to assess literacy skills in clinical practice?

BACKGROUND Health literacy screening is often not performed in clinical settings. One possible reason is the concern about the time involved in performing such assessments. Our objective was to measure the time required to administer the Newest Vital Sign (NVS) literacy assessment instrument to English-speaking primary care patients. METHODS The NVS was administered to 78 consecutive English-speaking patients in an outpatient primary care clinic. The length of time to complete the NVS was timed with a stopwatch. RESULTS The average time to complete the NVS was 2.9 minutes (95% confidence limit, 2.6-3.1 min). CONCLUSION The NVS is a health literacy screening tool of sufficient brevity to be considered for use in primary care practices.