Communication consensus report

Improving Communication—Improving Care
How health care organizations can ensure effective, patient-centered communication with people from diverse populations

Ethical Force Consensus Report (PDF, 1198KB, requires Adobe® Reader®)

Consensus Report Executive Summary (PDF, 56KB)

This report describes the importance of communication to health care and how organizations can take steps to ensure effective, patient-centered communication. The report is the first product of the Ethical Force Program's initiative on patient-centered communication. Improving communication is not only a significant goal on its own, but the relationship of communication to health care quality, patient safety, informed consent and other topics should make it a critical priority in every health care organization.

This report separates organizational performance into six main areas and three subareas. Within organizations, quality improvement efforts to promote patient-centered communication could focus on any or all of these interrelated areas.

• Understand your organization's commitment
• Collect information
• Engage communities
• Develop workforce
• Engage individuals
• Sociocultural context
• Language
• Health literacy
• Evaluate performance.

This report lists a number of specific, measurable expectations for performance in each of these areas—more than 50 in all. Organizations can use these performance expectations as a framework for evaluating performance and a guide for improving communication quality.

For more information, or to order a copy of this report:

The Ethical Force Program
515 N. State St.
Chicago, IL 60654
Phone: (312) 464-5260
Fax: (312) 464-4613
EthicalForce@ama-assn.org