Factors Affecting Physician-Patient Communication in the Medical Exam Room

Moving towards future patient-centered healthcare requires increasing health literacy [1] and encouraging patients to take a more active role in their own care. Physician-patient communication is a key factor influencing health literacy for patients. Poor health literacy can lead to poorer medical outcomes for patients [2-4]. Thus, an important design goal of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and other medical information technology should be to facilitate physician-patient communication and increase health literacy.