Submitted by HCapon on
PACIO Recommends Changes to Patient Comm Status
- Data Class: Currently Health Status Assessments (V5)
- Data Element: Patient Communication Status (currently Level 0)
- Recommendation: Advance Patient Communication Status to USCDI V6, rename “Patient Communication” and move to Patient Demographics / Information Data Class.
- Rationale: The PACIO (Post-Acute Care Interoperability) Project, established February 2019, is a collaborative effort between industry, government, and other stakeholders, with the goal of establishing a framework for the development of FHIR implementation guides to facilitate health information exchange. The PACIO community applauds the addition of Patient Communication Status to USCDI as a Level 0 data element in draft V5.
- Communication is the active process of exchanging information and ideas. Communication involves both understanding and expression. Forms of expression may include personalized movements, gestures, objects, vocalizations, verbalizations, signs, pictures, symbols, printed words, and output from augmentative and alternative (AAC) devices. When an individual communicates effectively, they are able to express needs, wants, feelings, and preferences that others can understand and can accurately receive messages from others. A person’s ability to comprehend and express information plays a critical role in medical decision making, sharing wishes with caregivers and practitioners, navigating the health care system, patient safety and satisfaction, decreasing diagnostic errors, and shaping the journeys and interactions when transitioning between different health care institutions where one relies heavily on communication skills. Many factors can impact comprehension, including hearing, cognitive and mental status, and functional status of body structures. This information is well represented under Health Status Assessments.
- What is not currently captured, is whether or not the patient overall communicates effectively, with or without accommodations or other technology. This notion is not clinical, but part of the patient’s identity and essential to many factors in their care including but not limited to planning for accommodation and the need for readying alternative communication measures ahead of their arrival. This is notionally different from the need for an interpreter or knowing a patient’s preferred language which are already captured in the US Core Patient profiles. We consider this information a Boolean “Yes” or “No” answer, and it is complimentary to information already collected.
Submitted by jpatterson@mitre.org on
PACIO Recommends Advancing Patient Comm Status as Defined