Intervention Title:
Educating Clinical Staff on Meeting Language Needs:Tools to Meet Patients' Language Needs – University of Massachusetts Memorial Health Care (UMMHC), Worcester, Mass.

Goal:
Remind clinical staff of their patients' language needs and how to meet them.

Innovation:
UMMHC developed a laminated poster to alert inpatient staff of patients' language needs and remind them about how to access interpreter services.

Result:
The poster is now used in inpatient units and is located on patients' doors. The poster has also helped encourage providers to preschedule interpreter service requests.

Institution:
University of Massachusetts Memorial Health Care
55 Lake Avenue North
Worcester, MA 10655

From the leadership:
“We have found that it is extremely important to raise constant awareness among medical staff about our patients' linguistic needs when it comes to communicating medical information related to their care. However, our services are worthless if providers don't have information readily and visually available on how to access interpreter services. Therefore, we have found these posters to be particularly helpful because they provide a constant reminder in the clinical setting to assess and meet those needs.“

Connie Camelo
Director of Interpreter Services

Profile:
University of Massachusetts Memorial Health Care is a 1,093-bed hospital and health system that is a clinical partner of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Clinical areas affected:

• Inpatient units

Staff involved:

• Interpreter Service Department staff
• Inpatient providers and staff

Timeline:
It took approximately one month to design, print and distribute the posters to the inpatient units.

Contact:
Connie Camelo
Director of Interpreter Services
University of Massachusetts Memorial Health Care
55 Lake Avenue North
Worcester, MA 01655
P: (508) 856-3780
cameloc@ummhc.org

Innovation implementation:
Many large hospitals and health systems struggle to remind providers of the availability of language services and the importance of meeting their patients' linguistic needs when it comes to communicating medical information related to care. To address this issue and remind all inpatient staff to meet their patients' language needs, UMMHC developed a laminated poster with important language services information. The poster is affixed to the door of the room of any patient requiring language services and includes the language preferences of that patient and instructions for providers about how to access an interpreter by phone or in person.

Initially, two posters were used to display the information. One poster informed providers of a particular patient's language needs, and the other provided information about how to access language services. However, the process of posting both posters became cumbersome for the staff. In order to simplify the process and increase compliance, both posters were combined into one. The poster was then tested in inpatient settings. Members of the Interpreter Services Department did daily rounds to verify that the posters had been posted at the door of limited English proficient patients. Seventy percent of the patients who had requested an interpreter had a poster affixed to their door. Based on this success, the hospital's administration is in the process of working to require the posters to be posted on all inpatient doors, similar to NPO (nothing by mouth) status or isolation notification.

The posters serve as an effective reminder and have increased the use of language services.

Advice and lessons learned:

1. Two for the price of one. The department recently combined the two posters to include both the patient and provider information on one poster.
2. Check posting. UMMHC discovered that having interpreters spot checking units to make sure the posters were hung helped increase compliance and utilization.
3. Education increases utilization. The posters have helped providers plan ahead for their language service needs. Prior to the posters, 100 percent of inpatients' requests were same day, but now five percent of requests are prescheduled. The department's goal is to increase prescheduling of inpatients' requests to 20 percent in order to better predict demand.

Cost/benefit estimate:
There were only minimal costs to implement the new program, including design and printing of the posters. The posters have increased prescheduled service requests from zero percent to five percent and increased the overall utilization of interpreter services.