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

lectures, demonstrations, group activities, videos, and practice exercises aimed at helpingparticipants become more effective and professional when facilitating communicationbetween health care providers and LEP patients. One goal of the course is to offerparticipants opportunities to practice interpreting skills in a safe and supportive environment.This training is not intended to serve as an accreditation or a language enhancement program.The courses are conducted in English with resource materials and practice exercises availablein nine languages. The training was pilot tested in 2001 at various levels of health planoperations before being made available throughout L.A. Care’s contracted provider network.Topics addressed in the 40-hour training include:• The Right to an Interpreter in a Health Care Setting• Ethical Principles of Health Care Interpreting (based on the California Standards forHealth Care Interpreters developed by the California Healthcare InterpretingAssociation [CHIA])• Elements of Message Clarifying• Memory Development• Interpreting Protocols• Sight Translation• Practice Dialogues and Basic Medical Terminology in English and Languages Otherthan English• Culture and Its Impact on Communication• Patient Advocacy• Tips for Professional DevelopmentBENEFITS/RESULTS. Participants who complete the course help raise awarenessthroughout the system about the importance of providing trained and qualified interpreters topatients and their providers, an outcome that gives their organizations additional protectionfrom liability. The project yielded positive feedback from providers and staff who werealready functioning as interpreters. Many were especially appreciative of the opportunity tobe formally trained in skills they were already struggling to apply informally and found thetraining to be a forum to express concerns about practices for which there were often nowritten policies or manuals to guide them. Administrators at one of the larger hospitals in thecounty saw the program as a way to support larger institutional changes underway in thedelivery of services, and plan—in just one hospital alone—to send 1,000 bilingual employeesthrough the training courses.Despite limitations of a brief 40-hour course, many graduates of the program find they areable as a result to serve more effectively as interpreters in their workplaces. They rely less ontelephone interpreters, saving money and improving services to patients in areas where theywere previously lacking.Training focuses on improving communication between providers and LEP patients. Bettercommunication results in higher quality care, improved patient satisfaction, better patientcompliance, improved health outcomes, and increased provider compliance with state andfederal laws and insurance contracts.The project began with a consultant that L.A. Care retained to conduct a series of health careinterpreter trainings and to develop materials that the health plan could use for presentation57