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

• Technology: A dedicated web site for HCICP (www.kphci.org) was developed andcontinues to be maintained.The success of the HCICP over the years and its ongoing expansion to 15 additionalgeographic areas has shown that partnerships between health care organizations andaccredited academic institutions are sustainable and mutually beneficial. Collaborative effortsmeet a mutual need by joining the health institutions in need of professional HCI and theacademic institutions that train them. Kaiser Permanente encourages and implementsongoing HCICP partnerships outside its service area.BENEFITS/RESULTS.• Established six internship programs at Kaiser Permanente facilities and hospitals.• Partnered with Hablamos Juntos, a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,to establish 10 additional program sites throughout the country.• Trained and certified more than 100 college-level instructors and staff at KaiserPermanente’s HCI Instructor Institute.• Graduated more than 900 students from HCICP at partnering colleges with a 90percent successful completion rate.• Enhanced HCICP students’ marketability and readiness for employment in healthcare while building community capacity to serve limited English populations.Graduates represent the following languages and dialects: Arabic, Cantonese, Farsi,Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Laotian, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalogand Vietnamese.• Increased internal Kaiser Permanente workforce capacity by improving HCI skillsamong employed staff.• Based on a Kaiser Permanente-funded research study, providers who used trainedHCI overwhelmingly preferred them over untrained HCI (family members andbilingual staff). The same study found that patients were able to differentiate betweentrained and untrained HCI, and favor trained HCI significantly.In addition, the HCICP graduates fulfill cultural and linguistic health service needs,contribute to Kaiser Permanente’s overarching mission to reduce health disparities and aid incompliance with federal and state mandates such as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.The HCICP project received the NCQA Recognizing Innovation in Multicultural HealthCare Award in 2006 and the AHIP Community Leadership Award in 2007.LESSONS LEARNED/NEXT STEPS. Surveys are used to continually evaluate theprogram, monitor employment rates of graduating students, and identify areas forimprovements. Program evaluations are also being developed to examine patient careprocesses and outcomes. In addition, language assessments will be developed to better servenew students, and processes for internship and career placement programs will be furtherrefined.Lessons learned include recognition of a spectrum of HCI competencies that should beaddressed by providing different levels of trainings. Additionally, the HCICP curriculum isupdated continuously to reflect changes in heath care and the demographic shifts that mayimpact the populations served in specific service areas.40