Cleft and Craniofacial Clinic Formats in the United States: National and Institutional Survey.

Background: Craniofacial teams employ multidisciplinary clinics to optimize patient care. Different clinic formats exist among teams. Formats include providers rotating from room to room as separate specialties, patients rotating from room to room to either separate specialties or as 1 group, as well as providers rotating together as 1 group. Surveys were used to study family preferences between the different formats and to compare them with trends of national practices. Methods: Families of the authors' team clinic patients were surveyed from November 2012 to February 2013, after a clinic format change from patients moving between rooms to see providers, to providers moving between rooms to see patients. This survey focused on patient satisfaction, clinic format preference, and their perception of efficiency. A second, national survey was distributed to 161 American craniofacial teams approved by the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association to survey clinic formats, provider satisfaction, and experience with other formats. Institutional survey data were tabulated as percentages and further analyzed using the Mann-Whitney Test. The national survey data was then tabulated and compared with authors' institutional results. Results: Thirty-nine of 54 (72.2%) families responded to the institutional survey. Providers moving between rooms were associated with greater patient satisfaction (mean 4.8 of 5, 5 being most satisfied) (0

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