Effective communication: The development of an e-resource for implementing communication and language assistance services in health and health care

A growing body of research points to effective communication as a critical component of quality health care and patient safety. To be effective, communication in a health care setting should take each patient’s unique cultural, contextual, and communication preferences into account. Communication and language assistance services – including interpretation services, plain language documents, and signage and wayfinding – facilitate effective communication between a provider and patient.

To assist health and health care organizations in implementing communication and language assistance services, Think Cultural Health from the HHS Office of Minority Health offers an e-resource called A Patient-Centered Guide to Implementing Language Access Services in Healthcare Organizations (the Guide). The Guide helps organizations implement effective language access services to meet the needs of patients with limited English proficiency more appropriately.

Given the demographic, health policy, and health care practice changes that have occurred since the Guide’s publication in 2007, the Think Cultural Health project team is revising the Guide in 2014. The revision process will include needs assessment focus groups, a literature review, and ongoing consultation from an advisory panel. The revised Guide will include up-to-date information and resources, as well as specific, empirically-supported strategies for implementing communication and language assistance services.

This presentation will discuss the revision process and resultant outcomes for the Guide. The goal of the revision process is to create an informative, useful, and salient e-resource that helps health and health care organizations implement communication and language assistance services and therefore communicate more effectively with their patients.