Poster Presentations (Group I)

HealthPartners equitable care and service strategies are to:

•         Improve our understanding of members and patient background (race, ethnicity and language).
•         Measure disparities with a long-term aim to reduce disparities in health care treatment and outcomes—Health and Care Goals 2010.
•         Develop a diverse and culturally competent work force.
•         Be a community partner with organizations that work to improve health care disparities.
•         Improve our ability to provide effective care and service for persons with limited- English proficiency.

HealthPartners aims to provide patient-centered communication to meet each patient’s and member’s individual needs.  For patients and members who need language assistance, our goal is to provide high quality spoken and sign language assistance services to support the Six Aims and decrease health care disparities.  This includes:

• To provide language assistance services;
  
• To use trained interpreters consistently and appropriately; and,
  
• To create a HealthPartners culture of knowledge and expectation about the use of trained interpreters.

Language assistance services are a key strategy to address health care disparities.  Reducing these disparities is a top national and Minnesota public health priority.  HealthPartners developed a Language Assistance Plan and Your Guide to Interpreter Services for use by our entire organization, including medical and dental clinics, hospital, and health plan.  The Language Assistance Plan is the call to best practice and provides the rationale for the organizational commitment to and priority of language access.  Your Guide to Interpreter Services is an easy-to-use, how-to guide to help employees across the organization understand how to arrange for an interpreter.  The Guide even includes some suggested talking points and phrasing with patients to encourage use of professional interpreters.  Both documents are available on the employee web site.  In addition, site-specific trainings were completed. 

The presentation will describe HealthPartners approach to the plan and guide, and how it is being used.  A copy of the HealthPartners Language Assistance Plan will be available.