Patient Education Vendor

Key Takeaways

• Print patient education materials remain essential at the point of care, especially for patients with limited digital access.

• Most materials in clinical circulation are written above the recommended 6th-grade reading level. This creates a health literacy gap that vendor content can close.

• A dedicated patient education vendor handles writing, clinical review, translation, and updates so your staff doesn't have to.

• When evaluating vendors, ask specifically about reading level standards, content review cadence, library breadth, and translation approach.

• Off-the-shelf materials cover most patient education needs; custom content makes sense only for specialized pathways or populations.

Picture the moment a patient is handed their discharge paperwork. The doctor has explained everything—medications, warning signs, follow-up appointments. The patient nods, says they understand, and walks out the door. Within 24 to 48 hours, according to a small study published in The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, roughly half of those patients will be unable to accurately recall key details of their care, even though more than 90% of them felt confident they could.

That gap is what well-designed print patient education materials are built to close. In an era of patient portals and telehealth, it's tempting to treat patient information leaflets as a legacy format. They aren't. Print remains essential at the point of care, and for the tens of millions of patients with limited digital access, it's often the only reliable channel. The real question isn't whether to use print, it's where that content comes from and whether it's accurate and educational.

Search for printed patient education booklets, brochures, and workbooks by clinical specialty.

Health literacy is a more significant problem than most organizations fully reckon with. The average U.S. adult reads at roughly an 8th-grade level, according to the National Center for Education Statistics; for Medicare beneficiaries, that average is closer to a 5th-grade level. 

The Joint Commission recommends patient education materials be written below a 6th-grade level. Research evaluating materials actually distributed in clinical settings consistently finds most of them written well above that threshold. One study found 28% of materials at a 9th-grade level or higher, and fewer than a quarter below the 6th-grade mark. 

The equity argument for print is equally concrete. A review in JCO Oncology Practice found that for patients without reliable digital access—a population that skews older, lower-income, and rural—print is the preferred and often only effective channel for health education. 

And print does something digital can't quite replicate: it follows the patient home. A handout can be stuck to the refrigerator, handed to a family caregiver, brought to the next appointment, or have notes jotted down on it. Research on patients' own reported memory helpers found discharge paperwork cited as useful by 88.7% of patients, well ahead of the patient portal.

Shop for printed patient education booklets, brochures, and workbooks by monthly health observances.

Many health systems produce at least some patient education materials in-house, and most run into the same problems. Clinical staff who write the content are subject-matter experts, not health writers. And the staff time spent developing and reviewing handouts is time not spent on patient care.

Building high-quality, readable, multilingual, regularly updated patient education content at scale is a specialized function. A dedicated patient education vendor is built for exactly that function. 

Professionally written patient education handouts start with the reader, not the clinician. They're tested for readability and actionability, formatted for real-world use, and maintained by a clinical review process that updates content when guidelines change.

The practical value of a vendor relationship is in what it removes from your plate: the writing, the clinical review, the translation, the design, and the ongoing maintenance. What remains is the selection and deployment of content that's already been built to a professional standard.

Search for printed patient education booklets, brochures, and workbooks by clinical specialty.

Ask specifically what reading level the vendor targets and how they verify compliance. Any credible vendor will use established readability tools like the Flesch-Kincaid reading test, which evaluates content based on school grade level (shoot for 6th grade or below). It does this by scoring average sentence length and average number of syllables per word.

You should also evaluate any patient education examples for actionability (does the patient know what to do next?) alongside comprehension. A handout written at a low grade level can still be functionally useless if it's poorly organized, confusingly written, or doesn't translate to action.

A library that covers the most common conditions but leaves clinical gaps just shifts the production burden back in-house. Look for breadth across chronic conditions, procedure prep, medication education, and preventive care. Standard gaps tend to fall in condition management beyond the initial diagnosis, such as complication management, medication adjustment, and lifestyle content, as well as behavioral health and pediatric-specific materials. For example, WebMD Ignite covers more than two dozen topics. One general diabetes handout is not the same as a set of materials covering diagnosis, medication management, lifestyle, and complications. 

Ask who reviews the content, how often, and what happens when a major guideline changes. A vendor without a documented, clinician-led review process is a vendor whose content may quietly go stale.

Translation is not the same as localization. A document translated word-for-word from English may be grammatically correct but culturally unfamiliar in ways that reduce both comprehension and trust. Ask whether translated materials are reviewed by clinicians with native language fluency, and whether they're adapted for cultural context—not just converted.

Many Spanish-language printed education materials on common conditions are available through our Print on Demand service.

Your organization will need to add branding, contact information, and potentially facility-specific pathways. Understand what level of customization the vendor supports and what guardrails exist to ensure that changes don't inadvertently introduce clinical inconsistencies. Surface customization (logo, contact details) is straightforward; substantive clinical customization requires more scrutiny.

Learn more about our Custom printing service for healthcare providers of all sizes.

• Content review cadence
  • How often is content reviewed?
  • What triggers an out-of-cycle update when guidelines change?
• Reading level standards
  
  • What is your target grade level?
  • Which readability tools do you use?
  • Do you evaluate actionability separately from comprehension?
• Translation and localization
  
  • Which languages are available?

• Customization options
  
  • What can be customized by our team vs. requiring vendor involvement?
  • What guardrails prevent clinical inaccuracies in customized versions?
• Library scope
  
  • How many topics does the vendor’s library cover?
  • What clinical areas and specialties are included, and how are gaps addressed?
• Print formats and integration
  
  • What file formats are supported?

High-quality print patient education materials are a core component of effective care transitions, medication adherence, and health equity. The handout a patient takes home after a difficult diagnosis or a complex procedure isn't a minor operational detail, it's part of their care journey.

A dedicated print patient education vendor offers health systems a way to meet that standard at scale without absorbing the cost and complexity of building it in-house. The right vendor brings professional writing, clinical governance, multilingual content, and consistent readability standards that most organizations simply can't replicate internally. The questions above are a starting point for finding one worth working with.

1. Patients Overestimate How Well They Recall Diagnoses, Care After Discharge. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, 2023. Reported via Fierce Healthcare. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36494268/

2. Mamedova S, Pawlowski E. Adult Literacy in the United States. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Education, 2019. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp 

3. Doak CC et al. Evaluation of Printed Health Education Materials for Use by Low-Education Families. Patient Education and Counseling, 2014. PubMed PMID: 24597957. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24597957/

4. Readability of Patient Education Materials Available at the Point of Care. PMC3514986. (Cites Joint Commission ≤5th grade recommendation and 75% physician PEM distribution stat.) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3514986/ 

5. Enduring Power of Print: How Health Information Pamphlets Promote Equity and Trust in Patient Education. JCO Oncology Practice, 2025. https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/OP-25-00739 

6. Shoemaker SJ, Wolf MS, Brach C. Development of the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT). AHRQ / Patient Education and Counseling, 2014. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5085258/  

7. Giguere A et al. Printed Educational Materials: Effects on Professional Practice and Healthcare Outcomes. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2020, Issue 8. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32748975/