UMass Memorial Medical Center

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UMass Memorial Medical Center

• Interpreter Services Department

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UMass Memorial Medical Center

• Three campuses and medical school
• Medical Center Statistics (Worcester)
• Licensed Beds 771
• Employees 9,610
• Hospital Admissions 40,013
• E.D. Visits 128,250
• Ambulatory Department Visits 689,954

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Interpreter Services Department

• Director of Interpreter Services 1.0 FTE
• Coordinator of Education, Training, and
  Translations 1.0 FTE
• Office Support Staff 2.35 FTE
• Staff interpreters 28.4 FTE (Albanian, ASL,
  Chinese, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian,
  Vietnamese)
• Independent Contractors 40 interpreters (ASL,
  Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Bengali, Cambodian,
  Chinese Mandarin, Chinese Cantonese, Farsi,
  French, Haitian Creole, Greek, Guyarati, Hindi,
  Hmong, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese,
  Russian, Spanish, Somali, Swahili, Twi, Tigrinya,
  Urdu, Vietnamese)

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Interpreter Encounter Totals
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Interpreter Encounter Totals
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How We Started
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Basic Workflow of Department

• Identify Need for Interpreter
• Schedule Future Appointments
• Face-to-face interpretation
• Telephonic interpretation
• Manage Same-Day Requests
• Onsite dispatchers handling live schedule
• Document Interpretation
• Database Medical Record

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Identifying Need for Interpreter

• Patients language, and need for an interpreter,
  are required fields in the registration process
• Information is consistently collected at point of
  registration or inpatient admission
• Information becomes part of the patients
  electronic admissions data and medical record
  (available In IDX scheduling system)

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Future Request Forms
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Appointments Linked in IDX
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Same-Day Requests

• Business Hours
• Two dispatchers
• Interpreter floaters
• Page/call system
• Direct Access to Telephonic Interpretation
• After-Hours
• Answering Services
• On-site on-call interpreters
• Direct Access to Telephonic Interpretation

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Just-in-Time Interpretation

• Strategies
• Providing just-in-time access to language
  services
• Eliminates cost of interpreters delay
• Meets increasing demand
• Complements on-site resources
• Meets needs of patient centered organization and
  open access
• Discourage use of unqualified interpreters
• Tools
• Optimal equipment
• Direct access to an outsourced vendor
• Advance scheduling with vendor
• Advance notification to departments

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Data as Catalyst to Quality

• The Encounter Form
• Location
• Date/Time
• Providers
• Informed Consents
• Admission/Discharge
• Data Entry (Statistics)
• Medical Record

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Recent Performance MeasuresFrom the RWJ
Speaking Together Collaborative

• ST-1 Percentage of patients who have been
  accurately screened for their preferred languages
• ST-2 Percentage of patients receiving language
  services from qualified interpreters or bilingual
  providers
• ST-3 Percentage of encounters where patient wait
  time for an interpreter is 15 min or greater
• ST-4 Percentage of time interpreters spend
  providing medical interpretation in clinical
  encounters
• ST-5 Percentage of encounters where interpreters
  wait ten minutes or more for providers

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Data Examples

• How Data Helps Prove the Point

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Telephonic Interpretation Increased270 Increase
from Apr 07 to Apr 08
Before Roll-Out
After Roll-Out
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Night-Shift InterpretationsWhat a difference an
on-site interpreter makes!
On-Site Interpreter
On-CallInterpreter
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Case Study for ASLScheduled Appointments at
Maximum
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Case Study for ASLSame-Day Requests Continue to
Increase