Upholding Effective (and Accurate) Communication in Healthcare

As the great-grandson of Antonio Persic, one of the crew of the RMS Carpathia, which 100 years ago became famous for rescuing some of the survivors of the RMS Titanic, I find great irony in the erroneous headline in The Evening Sun (New York), April 15th, 1912 which read, ‘All Saved From Titanic After Collision’ and the haste of relaying inaccurate breaking news on June 28th, 2012 surrounding the Supreme Court of the United States ruling¹ on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.² As many in the United States and around the world watched the dramatic moments unfold across their television, online, and across social media, for the future of one of the most unique and complex systems of health, major news outlets, most notably Cable News Network, known globally as CNN³ and Fox News initially reported that the mandate was struck down when, in fact, the Court ruled 5-4 to uphold the much debated individual mandate and further stated that the requirement to have insurance is a tax (not a penalty as previously intimated), and is constitutional. Personally, I witnessed CNN report it was struck down while watching online and across social media and was thoroughly confused as the clarifications emerged but quickly understood what had transpired.

My great mentor and teacher, William J. O'Malley, S.J., imparted these words of wisdom during a lecture in 1989, ‘We have to submit to the evidence, not dominate it. We don't make reality, we respond to it.’ As the Editor-in-Chief of a peer-reviewed professional journal, coverage of issues here related to communication in healthcare are by design not in real-time (unless you count my own Twitter coverage from conferences and across news events like the Supreme Court ruling) and measurably clarified. As my colleague Mark Zezza and I stated in a previous editorial about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act⁴ there have been innumerable conflicting messages and inadequacies surrounding clarity in communications that have truly hindered reform efforts and caused major confusion among the general public.

In the National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care,⁵ Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius shared one of the many strategies under the Affordable Care Act² and one of the specific quantitative goals is ‘promoting effective communication and coordination of care.’ As the site that maintains the report states, ‘The United States leads the world in discovering new approaches to prevent, diagnose, manage, and cure illness,’ my hope that in our leadership we consider our current communications in healthcare more diligently and won't need heroic efforts and bold new approaches to respond appropriately to what should be the most concise and easily accessible information.