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HealthPartners Recognized by National Committee for Quality Assurance for Closing Cultural, Linguistic Gaps in Health Care
Sept. 13, 2006
WASHINGTON, – HealthPartners has been awarded the prestigious "Recognizing Innovation in Multicultural Health Care Award" by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for its efforts to reach across cultural divides and provide its members with culturally and linguistically appropriate health care services.
"HealthPartners has created a model for plans nationwide to follow on how to bridge language and cultural gaps that so easily get in the way of quality health care," said NCQA President Margaret E. O'Kane. "HealthPartners language assistance initiatives tackle the very real issue of health care disparities among racial and ethnic minorities."
HealthPartners has taken a proactive and strategic approach to addressing language access, including conducting an organizational assessment of its cultural competence capabilities, developing best practices in interpreter services and collecting data on member language preference, race, and country of origin, on a voluntary basis, through its electronic medical record and website.
HealthPartners provides on site, in-person interpretive services in all key languages spoken by its patients (Cambodian, Lao, Thai, Oromo, Amharic, Spanish, Somali, Hmong, Vietnamese, Russian and American Sign Language). Providers also have telephone access to interpreter services for more than 150 languages.
"When our members use professional interpreters to communicate about their health and coverage, they're more likely to express concerns, ask questions and feel assured that they are understood." said Mary Brainerd, HealthPartners president and CEO. "The positive impact on the quality of care and service is tremendous."
According to the landmark 2002 Institute of Medicine study, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, minorities in the U.S. tend to get lower quality health care than whites, even when such factors as medical conditions, insurance and economic status are equivalent.
HealthPartners will share details of its language assistance initiatives at two one-day national conferences on multicultural healthcare on September 14, in Redondo Beach, Calif., and on October 18, in Washington, D.C.
"Accounting for the culture, values and preferences of the individual is at the heart of patient-centered care," said O'Kane. "These plans are to be commended for taking the lead in designing methods to ensure that all their members are getting the highest-quality care possible."
The Recognizing Innovation in Multicultural Health Care Awards arose from projects conducted by NCQA – with major funding from The California Endowment and support from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services – to investigate the feasibility for health plans to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate care and to monitor health care disparities using clinical quality data.
For information about the other health plans recognized by NCQA and the conferences on multicultural health care, visit www.ncqa.org/Education/index.htm.
About HealthPartners
Founded in 1957, the HealthPartners (www.healthpartners.com) family of healthcare companies serve more than one million medical and dental health plan members nationwide. It is the largest consumer-governed, nonprofit health care organization in the nation, providing care, coverage, research and education to improve the health of members, patients and the community. For the third year in a row, HealthPartners is rated one of the best commercial health plans in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, NCQA's "America's Best Health Plans 2007" and is ranked "Highest in Member Satisfaction among Commercial Health Plans in the Minnesota-Wisconsin Region" by J.D. Power and Associates.
NCQA, a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality, accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations, recognizes physicians and physician groups in key clinical areas and manages the evolution of HEDIS©, the tool the nation's health plans use to measure and report on their performance. For more information, visit www.ncqa.org.
The California Endowment, a private, statewide health foundation, was established in 1996 to expand access to affordable, quality health care for underserved individuals and communities, and to promote fundamental improvements in the health status of all Californians. For more information, visit www.calendow.org.
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