Communication Consensus Report

Improving communication—improving care

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

Consensus Report Executive Summary

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