Ensuring Quality Patient Communications With Bilingual Providers

To engage our UMass Memorial Health caregivers on the journey to become an integrated health care system, we need to keep them informed of our progress. This piece highlights how UMass Memorial Health is serving our patients with a formal process has been implemented to identify bilingual providers looking to deliver direct care in the preferred language of their patients. Learn about this online language proficiency test to qualify bilingual caregivers.

When caregivers can speak to patients directly in their native language, the outcomes are better. Patients develop a stronger relationship with the provider, better understand their condition, are more compliant with their treatment plan, and have a better overall experience.

Over 400 providers at UMass Memorial Health self-identify as bilingual caregivers, meaning they may be fluent in multiple languages. As an organization that serves a patient population speaking over 140 languages and is committed to enhancing the delivery of patient-centered care, these individuals are a huge asset.

However, if a caregiver is socially fluent but doesn't speak a language as well as they think they do, that's a concern. "False fluency" can reverse all the benefits to patients. Furthermore, regulatory agencies now require hospitals to assess the language proficiency and skill of bilingual clinicians in providing direct clinical care.

For these reasons, the Interpreter Services Department and Medical Staff Services introduced in 2020 a formal process to identify bilingual providers looking to deliver direct care in the preferred language of our patients. To date, 127 of our clinicians have been deemed as Qualified Bilingual Clinical Caregivers (QBCCs). To be listed as a QBCC, an applicant must successfully complete an online assessment.

Nikolaos Kakouros , MD, PhD, a cardiologist at UMass Memorial Medical Center who received QBCC certification in 2020, grew up in Athens, Greece, and is fluent in Greek and English. He said he has witnessed firsthand the profound impact that communicating in a patient's native language can have on their health care experience.

"The implementation of formal language proficiency assessments ensures our bilingual clinical providers have a qualifying level of proficiency in communicating directly with patients independent of an interpreter to deliver high-quality care, meeting both regulatory requirements and the linguistic needs of our diverse patient population," Dr. Kakouros explained.