organize, agitate, open wide and say “ahhh”

Andrew Friedman

organize, agitate, open wide and say “ahhh”

On Tuesday, after months of pressure from the immigrant community, close to one hundred immigrant patients as well as local elected officials from Washington Heights held a press conference to announce that Columbia Presbyterian Hospital is starting a comprehensive new program to provide translation and interpretation services to patients with limited English proficiency. The new services will guarantee equal access to health care services for hundreds of thousands of patients each year.

Just months after Make the Road by Walking and others released a report entitled Lost in Translation that documented widespread problems for limited English proficient patients at the hospital, New York-Presbyterian Columbia University Medical Center has made tremendous improvements in services for patients who need language assistance.

The hospital has hired a language access coordinator and expanded staffing for interpretation services. The coordinator will be responsible for ensuring that patients' language needs are met. The hospital has also made a commitment that all staff and volunteers will receive annual training regarding language services.

The hospital has also begun an awareness campaign called "NYP Speaks Your Language" to publicize their language access services to the community and among patients and staff. The hospital with make many changes such as increasing the number of written documents translated for patients and updating the data collection system over the next year to make that data about language needs is collected and analyzed.

Columbia-Presbyterian is only one of many city hospitals and health clinics, though. It is crucial that they all work to ensure equal access to services for all New Yorkers.

Comments

I love that woman's sign. For those of you who speak Spanish even less than I do, it reads "The Community fought, the Hospital listened" except in Spanish, it rhymes.

Great work everyone!

To save time in implementing the language plan please refer to JACHO standards set for hospitals,clinics, etc. and join hands with this federal related credential and accreditation board. The critieria and its institutional practices were set in the 1980's or 90's; or maybe even further back than this in order to insure access and quality of care in the State of NY. The battle should not be that long. Lanugage accommdation is law/ regulation therefore there is already a budget line. Keep watch and be sure to have continuous community evaluation which is madated under Title XX of Public Participation Act. Get to the table to determine who you would like to hire.

Best to everything.