The CSAT is a 35 item self-assessment that clinical team members and partners can take to evaluate the sustainability capacity of a practice. We define clinical sustainability capacity as the ability of an organization to maintain structured clinical care practices over time and to evolve and adapt these practices in response to new information. When you take the assessment online, you will receive an automated summary report of your overall sustainability. You can use these results to engage in sustainability planning.

The CSAT has excellent usability and reliability, and preliminary validation data suggest that the CSAT is able to distinguish among different types of clinical settings.

The CSAT was piloted with 120 individuals assessing a clinical practice, including physicians, pharmacists, nurses, administrative and support staff, leadership, and others. The individuals represented a range of clinical settings (e.g., outpatient and inpatient), patients (e.g., adult and pediatric), and environments (e.g., academic medical centers, community hospitals, community health centers, and private practices).

Yes. The CSAT is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share-Alike license. You may adapt the tool, but you must acknowledge Washington University as the original creator of the tool, you may not make a commercial profit off of your adapted tool, and you must share your version under the same terms. You can adapt the tool by changing the phrasing, adding, or dropping questions, etc. Keep in mind that when you make these changes the revised tool may no longer be reliable. If you make changes, please send us a copy of the adapted tool at kprewitt@wustl.edu

The CSAT can be used in a wide variety of clinical practice settings from large health care systems to small clinics.

We recommend that multiple staff and partners take the assessment for a more complete picture of your clinical practice. When you create an account, you have the option to set up a Group Assessment and invite multiple people to individually complete the assessment tool. Results are then averaged together in a Group Sustainability Report.

When identifying participants, choose people who are knowledgeable about the practice and invested in its success. For example, front line staff, volunteers, leadership, and administrative staff could all bring different but valuable perspectives. If community support or partners are essential to the practice, consider involving representatives from these groups too. After you receive your Group Sustainability Report, it is important to discuss differences in opinion over the scores

The tool was designed to assess a wide range of clinical practices. We define the term ‘practice’ as the set of formal organized activities that you want to sustain over time. This can refer to the activities occurring within a variety of clinical settings. Some examples of clinical practices are: antibiotic stewardship, a new surgical procedure, electronic medical record order sets, or hand hygiene.

The CSAT is quick and easy to complete; you only need 10-15 minutes!

The Clinical Sustainability Framework and Assessment Tool was adapted from the PSAT, and is grounded in a comprehensive literature review and expert-informed Concept Mapping.

Clinical staff, leadership, evaluators, partners, and funders are all encouraged to use the CSAT and engage in sustainability planning. In fact, we recommend that multiple staff and partners take the assessment for a more complete picture of your practice.

The CSAT has a total of 35 likert scale questions and looks at 7 different sustainability domains.