Effective communication is at the heart of quality patient care. Handoffs – the transfer of patient care

responsibility from one provider to another – rely on communication. Although handoffs are fundamental for

clinical care, frequently conducted, and universally performed across sub-specialties, they are consistently inadequate and error prone. In fact, the Joint Commission cites ineffective communication as a root cause in nearly 70% of sentinel events, with more than half of these incidents citing handoffs as the point of breakdown.