making the business case for culturally and linguistically appropriate ...

specific purpose can result in larger benefits such as increased market share, or expansion ofservices to populations other than LEP and ethnic or cultural minority populations.Workforce and bilingual employee development is key. Faced with increasing demand forlanguage services, and in the absence of adequate numbers of on-site qualified health careinterpreters, health care organizations are turning to their own diverse work force as a meansto assure culturally competent care. Health care organizations serving LEP populations aredeveloping their workforces by hiring and training new and existing employees who areeither bilingual or interested in becoming bilingual. Employees proficient in a secondlanguage provide an internal value and benefit to a health care organization and lead tosavings in annual expenditures for outsourced language interpretation services.The projects highlighted in this report show that organizations can save money and provideeffective culturally competent care by improving the language skills of bilingual staff whoserve as interpreters. Most organizations will not have the resources to pursue instant acrossthe-boardbilingual or bicultural competency. However, organizations successful inimplementing bilingual programming have focused first on those employees who come indirect contact with LEP populations. In addition, cultural competency and languageinterpretation training are becoming increasingly available through academic institutions,with provider specific continuing medical education credits granted at program completion.Exploration and integration of community partnerships and resources is important. CLASStandard 12 speaks to using community relationships and business partnerships in health careto reach patients and consumers. The Young Children’s Health Center and KaiserPermanente used their local universities and colleges to train, educate and develop thelanguage skills of their employees and staff to serve LEP patients. Contra Costa established apartnership with three regional hospitals to purchase low cost language interpretationservices and telephone rates; and L.A. Care, with the help of local bilingual providers,developed vital translated medial documents in ten languages.Technology can be useful in serving LEP populations. Language interpretation lines andsatellite technology can help eliminate patient-provider language barriers. With the increaseduse of cell phones, telephone dual head/handsets and satellite voice speaker phones, healthcare organizations can operate and update communication technology to eliminate thebarriers and challenges related to accessing in-person language interpretation when needed.Performance measurement should be a component of the CLAS project plan. Health careorganizations that want to begin and continue CLAS interventions must take the necessarysteps to identify track and document the qualitative and quantitative outcomes of CLASprojects. In addition, those working on CLAS interventions must work as a team withfinancial staff members, and solicit information from non-programmatic managers and staffto support the continuation of their programs.Many CLAS resources are already available. Organizations may benefit from case examplesprovided in this report as well as pre-existing materials on CLAS. (Resources are identifiedin Appendix P.) The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Center forMedicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published a particularly helpful guide for managedcare plans interested in implementing CLAS initiatives. The guide includes information onhow to conduct an organizational assessment for CLAS, create a planning team, assess the26