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. Design. We used the membership of the University HealthSystem Consortium, an alliance of academic health centers in the United States for clinical services, to sun;ey electronically 53 of these centers regarding clinical service standards. The survey evaluated sen-ice standards in four areas; general communications, communications between physicians, ambulator) and inpatient clinical sere-ices and administrative standards. Results. Thirty-four institutions responded to the sun-ey (64%). Of these, 16 (47%) had clinical service standards, while the remaining 18 (53%) had not established formal standards. A feu 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 sen-ice standards at the centers, there were notable variations (e.g. non-urgent primary care visits ranged 3-14 days). Conclusion. Some academic health centers have developed and implemented patient-centered clinical sen ice standards for diverse areas of practice, however, the standards used appear to van for some aspects of care, but not for others.