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Speaking Together Provides Practical Tools for Improving Language Services Delivery
 

The quality of communication between a patient and his or her health care provider is a strong determinant of whether a patient receives optimal care. By identifying specific strategies that help hospitals build effective language services programs, we can help improve health care quality and patient safety for millions of people.  Since the learning collaborative started in November 2006, hospitals participating in Speaking Together have tested new strategies for delivering high-quality language services to patients with limited English proficiency (LEP). These hospitals are at the forefront of efforts in examining how they communicate with LEP patients and how hospital staff can better structure and manage language services.

“Tools for Improving Language Services Delivery” details a number of tools and ideas developed and tested in the learning collaborative that can be implemented by hospitals to facilitate effective, efficient and timely communication in their institutions. The document can be used to make improvements in the following areas: 

• Screening all patients for their preferred spoken language; 
• Ensuring that LEP patients receive initial assessment and discharge instructions from assessed and trained interpreters or from bilingual providers assessed for language proficiency; 
• Reducing patient and interpreter wait times; and
• Tracking the time interpreters spend providing medical interpretation in clinical encounters.

This document was developed by Catherine West, MS, RN and reflects the insights she has gained from her interactions with the Speaking Together grantees. Much of the wisdom in this document comes directly from the progress that has already been made at many of the Speaking Together hospitals and is a direct result of the commitment, dedication and expertise of the Speaking Together teams who work so hard, each day, to improve care for their patients and communities. 

Speaking Together thanks the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for its support of this work and its ongoing dedication to improving health care for all Americans.

Marsha Regenstein, PhD

Director, Speaking Together

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School of Public Health and Health Services, Department of Health Policy.