Furthermore, the front desk experience variable captures only one aspect of the attributes of a health literate health care organization.
We assessed three possible predictor variables (i.e., front desk experience, patient engagement through question asking, patient health literacy).
Because of the high correlation between the two front desk experience variables, we created a summed score; "good front desk experience" was defined as those who felt very comfortable with front desk staff and felt that front desk staff treated them with great respect.
We also tested pairwise interactions to examine whether patients' health literacy skills modified the associations of front desk experience and bringing questions with the outcome variables.
The identified associations between front desk experience and patient-reported outcomes should be investigated in greater depth in a future study.
In bivariate analysis, both front desk experience variables were significantly related to the outcome variable of respondents reporting that they made better choices about their health after seeing a doctor (p < .0001), as was the combined front desk experience variable (p < .0001).0001
In bivariate analysis (Table 2), both of the front desk experience variables were significantly related to the outcome variable of respondents reporting that they knew more about their health after seeing a doctor (p < .0001), as was the combined front desk experience variable (p < .0001).0001
In a multivariable logistic regression model, having a good front desk experience and bringing questions were significant independent predictors of knowing more about health after a doctor visit (Table 3).
Respondents who had a good front desk experience were 1.57 times as likely (95% CI: 1.26, 1.95) to report making better choices about their health after seeing a doctor.
A possible explanation for this finding is that a person's emotional response to a negative front desk experience might adversely affect their ability or motivation to process information in a doctor's visit occurring only minutes later.
We found that those who had a good front desk experience and brought questions to a doctor visit were more likely to report learning from and making better choices following the visit than their counterparts.
