Healthcare-Statistics

• Individuals with hearing loss report communication breakdowns, inaccessible health information, reduced awareness and training by healthcare providers and decreased satisfaction while grappling with inadequate health literacy. These issues contribute to health inequities and increased healthcare expenditures ($22,000 per patient over ten years, even after adjusting for sociodemographic and health factors[1]), inefficiencies, and worse health outcomes for individuals with hearing loss due to misunderstood medication instructions, diagnosis/prognosis confusion, and recovery at-home aftercare instructions, that negatively impact the patient’s future health.
• 1 in 3 adults over age 65 has hearing loss significant enough to affect communication with healthcare providers.
  (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 2023)
• A 2022 study by the American Journal of Public Health found that:
  • 60% of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) patients rely on captions or speech-to-text apps for healthcare communication.
• Telehealth Accessibility Survey (Health Affairs, 2023):

41% of DHH respondents said captions improved their understanding of provider instructions.