Association Between Patient-Provider Racial and Ethnic Concordance and Patient-Centered Communication in Outpatient Mental Health Clinics

Patient-centered communication (PCC) has been identified in the literature as central to providing quality care to patients. Some evidence suggests that racial/ethnic patient-provider concordance may be associated with increased PCC because of perceived similarity between the patient-provider match. This study examines whether there are differences in emotion focused PCC between racial/ethnic concordant (n = 55) and discordant (n = 36) dyads in a sample of behavioral health providers (n = 34) and their patients (n = 91) recruited from community mental health care settings as part of a larger study. PCC was measured using three items from a novel third-party coding system on whether providers "identified feelings," "accepted feelings," and "encouraged emotional expression" of the patient. Three separate mixed linear regression analyses were conducted to assess relationships between racially/ethnically concordant or discordant dyads and each of the communication items: (a) beta = .20, p = .12; (b) beta = 0.12, p = .39; and (c) beta = -0.05, p = .75. No significant differences were found between groups in the three items, suggesting that racial/ethnic concordance may not be linked to PCC measures related to emotion. It is possible that racially/ethnically discordant providers may compensate for cultural barriers to communication through additional emotion-focused communication strategies, or that other aspects of patient-provider similarity are more salient to PCC. Continuing to identify the characteristics and circumstances that lead to improved PCC may be a way to bridge the gaps in the quality of behavioral health care received by underserved communities, particularly communities of color.