Advanced Effective Communication, Cultural Competence, and ...

Chapter Six
ORGANIZATION
READINESS
A hospital’s ability to advance effective communication,
cultural competence, and patient- and family-centered care
in hospitals rests on its state of organization readiness. To
create the domains of organization readiness for the Roadmap
for Hospitals, staff incorporated elements from the following
frameworks:
• The Joint Commission’s Hospitals, Language, and Culture
framework [1]
• American Medical Association’s Ethical Force Program:
Improving Communication–Improving Care [2]
• National Quality Forum’s Comprehensive Framework and
Preferred Practices for Measuring and Reporting Cultural
Competency [3]
• The National Research Corporation (NRC) Picker’s eight
dimensions of patient-centered care [4]
• The Commonwealth Fund’s attributes of patient-centered
primary care practices [5]
• Planetree’s acute-care components of the Planetree
Model [6]
This chapter explores five domains for organization readiness:
leadership; data collection and use; workforce; provision of care,
treatment, and services; and patient, family, and community
engagement (see Table 6-1, page 35). Each domain represents a
key area that hospitals should address to make sure necessary
systems and processes exist to meet the unique needs of each
patient. The hospital can use the domains as a framework for
exploring the organization’s readiness to address patient needs
throughout the care continuum.
✔ Checklist to Improve
Effective Communication,
Cultural Competence, and
Patient- and Family-Centered
Care Through Organization
Readiness
Leadership
❑ Demonstrate leadership commitment to
effective communication, cultural
competence, and patient- and familycentered
care.
❑ Integrate unique patient needs into new
or existing hospital policies.
Data Collection and Use
❑ Conduct a baseline assessment of the
hospital’s efforts to meet unique patient
needs.
❑ Use available population-level
demographic data to help determine the
needs of the surrounding community.
❑ Develop a system to collect patient-level
race and ethnicity information.
❑ Develop a system to collect patient
language information.
❑ Make sure the hospital has a process to
collect additional patient-level
information.
Workforce
❑ Target recruitment efforts to increase the
pool of diverse and bilingual candidates.
❑ Ensure the competency of individuals
providing language services.
❑ Incorporate the issues of effective
communication, cultural competence, and
patient- and family-centered care into new
or existing staff training curricula.
❑ Identify staff concerns or suggested
improvements for providing care that
meets unique patient needs.
The next sections include both recommended issues to
address during organization readiness (with check boxes) and
practice examples (with round bullets) for the five domains of
organization readiness. While the recommended issues
present broad, overarching concepts that all hospitals should
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