Measuring patient-centered communication: Field testing an assessment toolkit in 16 health care organizations

Research Objective: Validate an assessment toolkit for organizational communication performance and provide field testing hospitals/practices with baseline data.

Methods: Hospitals and physician practices applied to participate in the project and were chosen based on size, location, demographic profile, and commitment to the project. Field testing required that each of the 16 selected sites implement all of the toolkit components, including a patient survey, a clinical staff survey, a non clinical staff survey, an organizational evaluation, and an executive survey. The surveys were developed based on the Ethical Force Program's consensus report “Improving Communication—Improving Care” and the performance expectations this report lays out. Each survey includes questions that address the report's themes of communicating across languages, cultures, and health literacy levels.

Results: Assessment allowed participating sites to compare communication performance from the perspectives of patients, clinical staff, non clinical staff and organizational leaders. These data helped sites determine where communication strategies were strong and where there needed to be improvement. Participating sites used the results to inform decisions about allocating funding for future quality improvement activities and revision of existing communication policies and practices.

Conclusion: The goal of this research is to determine whether repeated organizational assessment can guide organizations in focusing quality improvement efforts to make communication with patients more effective and patient-centered.