LHCR / Home Health Newsletters

June 2007
SBAR
Situation – Background – Assessment – Recommendation

SBAR is a technique that provides framework for communication about a patient’s condition between members of the health care team.  The SBAR tool can be adapted to any situation and can be used to organize information in preparation for communicating with a physician.  

            S = Situation

            What is going on with the patient? 

B = Background

What is the clinical background information that is pertinent to the situation?

A = Assessment

What did you find?  Analysis and considerations of options.

R = Recommendation

What action or recommendation is needed to correct the problem?

Using the SBAR method will allow the clinician to condense messages so they contain only concise and significant information about a patient.  Additionally, SBAR will allow clinicians to communicate their assessment of the situation, including what recommendations the clinician feels are needed to correct the problem.  SBAR can be an effective strategy to improve communications and outcomes, including reducing avoidable acute care hospitalizations. 

“Effective communication with our physicians has made a tremendous difference for us,” states Tricia Michot, RN DON of Better Care Home Health in Alexandria, Louisiana.  “Using the SBAR technique helps to keep our physicians informed of what is going on with their patients, and we are able to prompt them for advice.  We revised the tool to suit our needs and since implementing SBAR we have noticed a significant increase in the number of prompt responses we receive from our physicians which allows us to provide timely quality care to our patients.”

Home health agencies face many challenges when it comes to improving publicly reported measures.  Improved communication could be the solution to improving your agency’s outcomes, including avoidable hospitalizations.  For a complete description of SBAR and sample tools that will help you provide the right care for every person, every time, please visit MedQIC at www.medqic.org.  Additionally, SBAR for high risk patients may be found in the March Best Practice Intervention Package on the Home Health Quality Improvement National Campaign web site at  http://www.homehealthquality.org.