Several recent trends have had a profound impact on how consumers work, choose whether to change jobs and the ways they access health care: more employers required their workers to return to the office; fears of recession influenced hiring and retention practices; and health care providers left or are considered leaving their clinical practice in record numbers.

Optavise, a provider of voluntary benefit solutions, surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. workers with worker-sponsored health plans to see how these trends affect health care literacy, which it defines as "the capacity to obtain, process and understand the basic health information needed to make appropriate health decisions."

"Our survey found that employees still are not getting the information they need to make informed choices about their health care coverage or how to use that coverage effectively," the survey report said. Several key findings emerged from the survey: