• Eric Christopher Hoppa and Stephen C Porter.
• Division of Emergency Medicine, Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York/Long Island Jewish Medical Center, New Hyde Park, NY, USA. ehoppa@gmail.com
• Pediatr Emerg Care. 2011 Jun 1;27(6):507-13.

ObjectiveWe investigated the potential value of information shared by parents on a written form designed to capture needs and expectations for care to an emergency department (ED) system that values patient-centeredness.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective content analysis of parent-completed written forms collected during an improvement project focused on parent-provider communication in a pediatric ED. The primary outcome was potential value of the completed forms to a patient-centered ED system, defined as a form that was legible, included observations that mapped to medical problems, and included reasonable parental requests. We analyzed variation in potential value and other form attributes across a priori-defined visit type and acuity. Visit type was validated by a separate, blinded medical record review.ResultsA random stratified sample of 1008 forms was established from 6937 parent-completed forms collected during the 6-month improvement project; 995 of 1008 forms had matching medical records; 922 (92.7%) of 995 forms demonstrated potential value; 990 (99.5%) of 995 forms were legible; 948 (95.3%) of 995 forms included observations that mapped to a medical problem, and 599 (93.3%) of 642 forms contained reasonable parental requests. There was good agreement between the form and medical record for visit type (κ = 0.62). The potential value of forms did not vary significantly across visit type (88.2%-92.8%) or acuity (88.9%-93.4%).ConclusionsInformation shared by parents on written forms designed to capture needs and expectations provides potential value to a patient-centered ED system. The high level of informational value is consistent across patient type and acuity level.

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