In 15 communities throughout the country, Aligning Forces for Quality seeks to lift the quality of health and health care by teaming up with those who get care, give care and pay for care. Explore what our communities are doing to improve health care quality.
Language matters
Overview
As America becomes increasingly multilingual, physicians and other health care providers face a tremendous challenge that grows greater every year: how will we communicate efficiently and cost-effectively with patients who do not speak, or understand limited, English? Anyone who has spent time in a doctor's office or a hospital knows that effective communication is central to the quality of a health care experience. Therefore, language barriers represent a significant quality challenge for health care professionals when delivering care to racially and ethnically diverse patients in hospitals and other medical settings.
History
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has supported two programs focused specifically on the inherent link between providing quality care and providing quality language services for non-English-speaking patients.
Hablamos Juntos—Spanish for "We speak together"—was introduced in the fall of 2002 with the goal of developing affordable models to help English-speaking providers communicate more effectively with their Spanish-speaking patients. The program is developing resources for health care providers to assess the quality of written translated materials and work more effectively with interpreters.
Introduced in November 2006, Speaking Together is a national learning network of 10 hospitals working collaboratively to identify, develop and test the most effective and efficient ways to provide language services in clinical settings to patients with limited English proficiency. The program aims to develop an appropriate set of administrative and organizational mechanisms to embed language services into the fabric of health care delivery and quality improvement activities.
Application
RWJF remains committed to improving the quality of health care for all of America's racially and ethnically diverse patients. An important focus of our work will be to ensure that people in all communities with limited English proficiency have access to language services and assistance in clinical encounters when visiting hospitals and clinics. Using lessons learned from previous programs, the Foundation will work to develop capabilities and implement best practices for the delivery of language services through its Aligning Forces for Quality communities.
Aligning Forces for Quality communities
Our areas of focus
Aligning Forces for Quality applies a wealth of resources, expertise and training to effect real results in health care quality. Take a closer look at the focuses of our work:
Hear what colleagues and health care experts around the country, including Bruce Siegel, Ashish Jha and Elliott Fisher, have learned about improving health care quality and reducing racial and ethnic disparities in care.