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 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). CONCLUSION 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.