Clinical service standards at academic health centers.
OBJECTIVE
To describe the content and variability for clinical service standards related to quality of care among a convenience sample of academic health centers.


METHODS
We used the membership of the University HealthSystem Consortium, an alliance of academic health centers in the United States for clinical services, to survey electronically 53 of these centers regarding clinical service standards. The survey evaluated service standards in four areas; general communications, communications between physicians, ambulatory and inpatient clinical services and administrative standards.


RESULTS
Thirty-four institutions responded to the survey (64%). Of these, 16 (47%) had clinical service standards, while the remaining 18 (53%) had not established formal standards. A few of the centers had established standards for patient communications, such as policies for answering telephones by staff. More had developed standards for communications between physicians and most centers had established standards for appointment availability, especially for urgent visits. However, clinical service standards were less typical for inpatient consultative or diagnostic services. A small number of the academic health centers had standards for hours of operation and for handling administrative matters, such as patient complaints. For many clinical service standards at the centers, there were notable variations (e.g. non-urgent primary care visits ranged 3-14 days).


CONCLUSIONS
Some academic health centers have developed and implemented patient-centered clinical service standards for diverse areas of practice, however, the standards used appear to vary for some aspects of care, but not for others.
Retchin
S M
SM
Department of Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond 23298-0510, USA. retchin@hsc.vcu.edu
Perlin
J B
JB
Clark
R R
RR
D000046:Academic Medical Centers / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003142:Communication; D003954:Diagnostic Services / Q000592:standards; D004059:Diffusion of Innovation; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D008329:Managed Care Programs / Q000592:standards; D016134:Organizational Policy; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D012017:Referral and Consultation / Q000592:standards; D014481:United States