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Why should everyone in your practice learn more about
providing healthcare for people from other cultures?
The demographics - you can't afford not to learn more about the cultures your patients grow up in.
- Over one-third of the children in the seven Metro Denver counties are from a culture other than their healthcare provider's: Hispanic, African-American, Native-American or Asian-American.
- Racial and ethnic minorities make up 1/3 of the Colorado population and are the most rapidly growing group.
- 35% of all Colorado newborns are born into poverty.
- 2/3 of children in poverty are also in a minority household.
Reduce practice liability - Lower malpractice premiums if you a take a course on cross cultural care.
When the patient is of a different ethnic or racial group than the physician, and if the physician does not address cultural issues well:
- Miscommunications occur more often
- Patients (parents) express less satisfaction with their care
- Treatment adherence is significantly less
- More medical errors occur
- Families change providers more often
- Malpractice risk increases
COPIC is willing to give 2 ERS premium discount points to providers who complete:
- A 3-hour on-line course on cross cultural care – go to cccm.thinkculturalhealth.org to complete the 3-hour course. Send documentation to COPIC.
- A 4-hour workshop on cross cultural care. For information on the course contact: muzzulin.joan@tchden.org
Training in cross cultural care reduces expenses
- Using the methods described in cross-cultural care programs reduces the provider and staff time required for good health outcomes over the long time.
- Improves reimbursement rates with third party payers
- Insurance companies now pay attention to
- Customer satisfaction with practice
- Immunization rates
- ED and hospitalization rates
- Insurance companies now pay attention to
- All of these improve when the methods described in upcoming newsletters are applied to all patients and families.
- Improves reimbursement rates with third party payers
- Learning new methods of relating to families from other cultures will reduce the time taken per patient over the long run
- Poor understanding by healthcare providers regarding their patients culture leads to:
- Miscommunication
- Decreased continuity of care
- Lower immunization rates
- Less preventative care
- Poorer compliance
- Higher rates of ED use for minor problems
- Poorer outcomes are poorer
- Using the methods described in future e-Newsletters will:
- Increase immunization rates
- Decrease inappropriate use of the emergency department
- Improve compliance with treatment
- Reduce missed appointments
- Laws, Regulations, and Policies
Title VI, Civil Rights Act – If a practice receives compensation from Medicaid, SCHIP or Medicare, the practice cannot deny access or discriminate against people based on race, color or national origin. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the Health and Human Services (DHHS) interprets this to include that practices cannot exclude people because their primary language is not English. The guidelines from the OCR (year 2000), recently revised (and can be found on www.hhs.gov/OCR/Lep) are still flexible and somewhat vague regarding private practices. The degree to which practices are held accountable for serving “limited English proficiency” patients (LEP) depends on the number of patients, frequency of contact, nature of the service, the cost of providing translation and the resources of the practice. In 2006, practices that accept compensation from Federal programs must take “reasonable steps” to serve LEP patients. And one over 1/3 of children on programs with federal funding, it will be difficult to avoid. And, the requirements are being increased periodically.
In 2002, the Office of Minority Health (OMH) of DHHS published national standards for healthcare organizations. The 14 standards are shown in Table I and listed at http://www.omhrc.gov/omh/programs/2pgprograms/finalreport.pdf. At the present time these CLAS standards are applied to hospitals during their JCAHO accreditation. For private practices, they should be viewed as recommendations towards which to aim as their patient population evolves. It is anticipated that sometime in the future the CLAS standards will be applied to private practices that receive any type of Federal funding; and there may be a time in the future when all practices may be expected to meet standards like these.
American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement regarding the medical home concept emphasizes the importance of providing culturally sensitive and responsive care.
The Maternal Child Health Bureau’s Healthy People objectives emphasize the importance of “cultural competence”.
- Improve parent and patient satisfaction
- The methods described in our e-newletters can be used with all socio-economic levels and all cultures – even white middle- and upper-middle income parents - and have been shown to improve satisfaction for all families.
- Improve your practice HEDIS Outcomes
- Federal guidelines
Social responsibility
- Help reduce disparities in health care (see information library)
- Do your share
Want to learn more? explore our web site http://www.dimensionsofculture.com/home
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