News Briefs
TJC, HHS team up in language access effort
The Joint Commission (TJC) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights announced that "amid growing concerns about racial, ethnic, and language disparities in health care, "the organizations have developed a video titled "Improving Patient-Provider Communication."
The new video supports language access in health care organizations.
In a joint news release, the organizations said that health care organizations face challenges to accommodate increasingly diverse patient populations — more than 28 million people with hearing loss (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders estimate), and about 47 million people who speak a language other than English, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
With many competing priorities in health care, the news release states, the video explains why particular attention should be paid to federal civil rights standards and The Joint Commission's accreditation standards pertaining to effective communication and language access.
"Ineffective communication between patients and providers can result in misdiagnosis, inappropriate treatment, or medication errors," says Amy Wilson-Stronks, project director in the division of standards and survey methods and principal investigator for hospitals, language and culture study at TJC.
"When a provider cannot communicate effectively about a disease or treatment, or when a patient cannot describe their illness, they lack the basic connection needed to result in appropriate care. Appropriate communication is necessary for ensuring quality and safety in health care," she says.
CMA adopts resolution reform
The Catholic Medical Association (CMA) adopted a resolution on health care reform at its 78 Annual Educational Conference, held in Springfield, IL, in late October, in which it called on Congress and President Obama "to 'reset' the effort to enact health care reform legislation, to reexamine their commitment to the principles of the current legislation, and to begin the process anew."
The resolution urged legislators and President Obama to respect the principles of, among other things, the patient-physician relationship, as well as to exclude funding of abortion and to provide meaningful protection for the conscience rights of health care providers in any legislation.
Some health care workers at disadvantage
Less than one-fifth of Massachusetts direct-care workers — nursing home assistants, home health care aides, and personal care attendants — are enrolled in employer-sponsored health insurance plans, primarily because they are too costly, according to a new study on the impact of Massachusetts health reform on the state's largest employment sector.
A new study from PHI, a national nonprofit organization working to strengthen the eldercare and disability services workforce, completed in collaboration with Amy Lischko, DSc, assistant professor in the department of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, found that most employers in this sector offered employer-based insurance, but their direct-care employees did not enroll.
"The disincentive to work undermines state efforts to build a quality, stable direct care workforce," says PHI Massachusetts Policy Director Amy Robins. "Direct care work is among the state's fastest-growing job sectors, yet full-time workers really can't afford employer-based insurance."
Massachusetts employs nearly 100,000 direct-care workers, the organization said.
The Joint Commission (TJC) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights announced that "amid growing concerns about racial, ethnic, and language disparities in health care, "the organizations have developed a video titled "Improving Patient-Provider Communication."Subscribe Now for Access
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