A framework for clinical communication supporting healthcare delivery.

Interpersonal communications related to healthcare delivery, called clinical communications, take up a considerable amount of time. Nonetheless, there exist few tools in electronic health record systems that support clinical communications. We describe a framework for clinical communications and describe our experiences implementing tools to manage and document them within an electronic health record system. Categories of clinical communications include communications between patients and healthcare providers, among healthcare providers on a single clinical team, between healthcare providers in different clinical teams and different institutions, and between healthcare providers and individuals who can provide additional educational or evidence based materials to support care delivery.