Improving Language Services
To ensure that patients who need medical interpreter services are served as quickly as possible, Steward St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, part of the Boston AF4Q alliance, has replaced beeper dispatching with an innovative use of hand-held technology. Staff medical interpreters now carry iPod Touch devices which alert them each time new requests for language services are made. The interpreters take cases from a digital queue while the intranet-net based dispatching system tracks their work flow in real time. Requests are sent only to the appropriate interpreters – for example,...
Language barriers have been shown to be a large deterrent to the safety and quality of care provided to persons with limited English proficiency (LEP). The HQN Improving Language Services program addresses this issue and focuses on the provision of qualified interpreters at initial assessment and discharge for hospitalized patients with LEP. Allenmore Hospital, a member of the AF4Q initiative in Puget Sound, has taken strides to address this inequity by ensuring that all LEP patients are supported by qualified language services providers. In under six months, Allenmore was able to...
In March 2011, Tufts Medical Center, a member of the AF4Q initiative in Greater Boston, added a new field to the patient registration screen to record the patient’s preferred written language for health care information. All registration and admitting staff have been trained in collecting this new field and will begin asking patients on April 4, 2011. Since patients do not always speak and read the same language, Tufts Medical Center added this question to better meet their patients language needs—as it is often the simple steps that make a huge difference in providing...
All hospitals are required to provide interpreter services to patients who speak limited English, but there is little guidance to hospitals on the most effective, efficient ways to implement these requirements. Hospitals are attempting to meet the requirements in a variety of ways – but are doing so without federal guidance, uniform standards or agreed-upon systems for assessing the quality of their language services. As patient populations become increasingly diverse, hospital leaders are eager to learn from each other about how to cost-effectively provide high-quality interpreter services to patients with limited English proficiency (LEP), assess their own programs and improve the services they provide.
Hospitals participating in Improving Language Services are working to improve care for patients who speak or understand limited English, in part by better screening patients for preferred spoken and written language and efficiently meeting the language needs of their patients and by ensuring that all their LEP patients receive both initial assessment and discharge with the assistance of qualified language services providers.
Performance measures being assessed include:
- Number of patients receiving language services supported by qualified language services providers;
- Screening for preferred spoken language for health care; and
- Screening for preferred written language for health care information.
The AF4Q Hospital Quality Network is a diverse organization which addresses three separate QI initiatives: Reducing Readmission, Increasing Throughput, and Improving Language Services.
To learn more about HQN, download the HQN Brochure.
Aligning Forces for Quality - Hospital Quality Network
To improve quality locally, over 100 forward-thinking hospitals are participating in AF4Q through the AF4Q Hospital Quality Network. Member hospitals engage health care providers at all levels within a hospital to improve the quality and safety of patient care, identify potential disparities and craft plans to ensure equity. The work undertaken by hospitals in AF4Q’s Hospital Quality Network address three separate QI initiatives: Reducing Readmissions, Increasing Throughput and Improving Language Services.
Participating hospitals are a part of a learning network of institutions that develop and exchange quality improvement (QI) tools, strategies and lessons learned. They aim to develop and encourage the spread of effective and replicable QI strategies, models and resources within the hospital, across Aligning Forces communities and the country.
The breadth of the network gives it strength and diversity. The AF4Q Hospital Quality Network includes small, 25-bed critical access hospitals in places like Maine, Wisconsin and Humboldt County as well as large 500+ bed urban teaching hospitals in Memphis, Boston, Albuquerque and Oregon.