RT Journal
A1 Olson DP, Windish DM
T1 MEdiators of patient-physician communication discrepancies—reply
JF Archives of Internal Medicine
JO Archives of Internal Medicine
YR 2011
FD March 14
VO 171
IS 5
SP 475
OP 476
DO 10.1001/archinternmed.2011.52
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archinternmed.2011.52
AB 
We appreciate the correspondence from Kirwan and Bains and Egede. Together, their comments highlight the complex and multifaceted nature of patient-physician communication. Kirwan highlights several areas of paramount importance in assessing communication. We agree that many factors contribute to the “poor interpersonal performance” of physicians such as time constraints and systematic processes and agree that future research should aim to identify and remedy these while at the same time empowering patients to take more active roles in their own health care. Whether these interventions would decrease the readmission rate is a question we could not adequately examine because of the sample size of our study.1