GNYHA convened a quarterly meeting via webinar of its Hospital Language Assistance Coordinators Forum last week. The interactive webinar enabled coordinators to share hospital and health system language access experiences during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, identify issues, and discuss lessons learned. Hospitals discussed ways they connected remote interpretation services to telehealth platforms, the mobile device needs to aid with remote interpretation, how they worked with vendors, and document translation needs.
The discussion informed GNYHA’s plans to support hospitals’ preparation for future pandemic events. Resources in development include a vendor landscape tool to identify and compare language access vendor capabilities, vendor selection considerations guidance, and a translated documents pool. A small workgroup will further inform resource development.
GNYHA also provided a briefing on the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) final nondiscrimination rule and other OCR updates.