MINNEAPOLIS, September 16, 2008—Two metro hospitals have taken part in an 18-month project working to make efficient and effective hospital language services a reality.  

Hennepin County Medical Center and Regions Hospital were two of 10 hospitals nationwide with racially and ethnically diverse populations to participate in "Speaking Together: National Language Services Network," a program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and administered by The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.

"More than 46 million people, or approximately 17 percent of the U.S. population, speak a language other than English in their homes, a number that is expected to increase in the coming decades," according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website. "For this growing portion of the population, poor communication can result in serious consequences when it comes to accessing health care."

A toolkit from Speaking Together have been compiled from more than 200 strategies that health care organizations can adopt or adapt to significantly improve the quality of their own care. The resources include actionable summaries of the proven practices that worked at participating hospitals and that can be used by providers and health care institutions everywhere to improve language services.

Some of those actionable summaries, in a nutshell:

• Use measurement to track language services performance.
• Start small before spreading to the rest of the organization.
• Place clinical providers at the forefront of improvement efforts.
• Work with the quality improvement department to develop and oversee strategies for change.
• Engage senior and executive leadership in achieving high-quality language services in the organization.
• Develop a relationship with registration and scheduling departments as the first point of patient contact.
• Seek support from information technology to link systems.

The full Speaking Together final report, toolkit and other resources clearly explaining interventions to increase the effectiveness, timeliness and quality of language services can be found on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s website at: www.rwjf.org/qualityequality/product.jsp?id=29653.