How Adopting a Hybrid Model with a Virtual Interpreter Call Center Can Make Your In-House Interpreters More Efficient

The following is a guest article by Kristin Quinlan, CEO at Certified Languages International (CLI) With 1 in 5 residents speaking a language other than English at home and an expanding diversity of languages spoken in the U.S., language access services are only increasing in importance for healthcare organizations. Many large hospital systems have a team of in-house interpreters, but it can be challenging to manage those resources—hospitals often expend a lot of time and money as interpreters travel from one facility to another or make house calls with traveling nurses.  That’s why a small but growing number of leading-edge healthcare organizations have started to adopt a hybrid model using a virtual interpreter call center to help them efficiently and effectively connect staff and patients with interpreters.  How Virtual Interpreter Call Centers Work Consider how a typical day unfolds at a large healthcare system that has a team of in-house interpreters and a language services partner. Each morning, two schedulers might assess all the appointments for the day to identify which patients need an interpreter. They start assigning in-house interpreters, but they can only accommodate about 20% of their non-English-speaking patients because they need to leave time for the interpreters to travel between rooms or locations. They also might only employ a small team of interpreters in six of the 120 or more languages spoken by patients in their region. When an in-house interpre...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Regulations Telemedicine and Remote Monitoring Certified Languages International CLI Healthcare Costs Healthcare Efficiency Healthcare IT Burden Hybrid Model In-Hou Source Type: blogs