(1156) Project Teamness: Examining Interprofessional Teamwork at a Federally Qualified Health Center

Objectives: The primary objective of this study is to assess associations of teamness with employee burnout, job satisfaction, patient satisfaction, and clinical outcomes. Teamness has been synonymous with the effectiveness or functionality of a team; however, the term has evolved to define effective teamwork with specific components such as shared goals, mutual trust, and clear roles. Team-based care has long been accepted as a vital concept in providing patient care and quantifying a team's interoperability has been studied using multiple assessment tools. Federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) often face significant employee turnover, resulting in decreased productivity and increased workload for remaining employees. Yet, no published literature examines teamness and its correlation with employee burnout, job satisfaction, patient satisfaction, and clinical outcomes in an FQHC. This study aims to measure teamness, using a validated assessment tool, within a multi-site FQHC to further understand the correlation between teamness and employee burnout, job satisfaction, patient satisfaction, and clinical outcomes.

Methods: This cross-sectional study will assess employee perceptions of teamness and examine how teamness correlates with measures of employee burnout, job satisfaction, patient satisfaction scores, and clinical outcome measures. The voluntary, paper survey will gather anonymous responses using the Assessment for Collaborative Environments (ACE-15), as well as questions assessing job satisfaction and perceived burnout. The survey includes demographic questions, fifteen ACE-15 questions, and six questions focused on burnout and job satisfaction. The ACE-15 questionnaire is a validated tool designed to rapidly assess the quality of interprofessional teamwork in health centers. While this is an individually applied questionnaire, the ACE-15 focuses on assessing the healthcare team, even if some team members differ from the majority. The survey is designed to assess the core principles and values of effective team-based health care: shared goals, clear roles, mutual trust, effective communication, measurable processes and outcomes, and organizational support.

The survey has been distributed to patient-facing staff at ten health center staff meetings within a multi-site FQHC over several weeks. Participants indicate their primary and secondary health center locations in their responses. Patient-facing staff includes physicians, advanced practice nurses, pharmacists, optometrists, opticians, dental and optometric technicians/assistants, dentists, dental hygienists, physical therapists, dieticians, behavioral health clinicians/specialists, women’s health support staff, front desk staff, nurses, and medical assistants. Trainees and other temporary staff were excluded from this study. The following existing data will be collected and stratified by health center: patient satisfaction data that is compiled monthly and Health Center Program Uniform Data System (UDS) data for clinical outcomes. Descriptive statistics will be used to summarize the data by health center and team, and inferential statistics will be used to assess for associations between teamness and job satisfaction, employee burnout, patient satisfaction, and clinical outcomes.

Results: Research in progress.

Conclusions: The results of this study will allow the research team to summarize employee perceptions of teamwork at the health centers, which could lead to quality improvement projects. This project will help inform the feasibility of larger scale implementation of a teamness assessment tool at other FQHCs nationally. By comparing employee satisfaction with clinical outcomes from UDS and patient satisfaction scores, the results of this study will allow the research team to identify the models of care and health center attributes that lead to better patient satisfaction, job satisfaction and enhanced outcomes. These models can be shared and mirrored at other health centers to reach the ultimate goal of enhancing clinical outcomes, improving patient experience, and addressing team well-being in clinics that serve patient populations with financial, cultural, and socioeconomic barriers.