Interpretation and Beyond.

Building a Better Patient/Physician Relationship

JRivera Associates understands that in health care, context is just as important as the message itself. The accurate transfer of information between patients and providers is essential to quality of care and successful health outcomes. Miscommunication is one of the most frequent causes of serious adverse health events¹. And when patients suffer adverse outcomes from medical errors, the consequences are much more severe in limited English proficiency patients (LEP) than in English-speaking patients². Historically, it has been acceptable that children of Latino families interpreter for their mothers and fathers and not use a qualified interpreter or interpreter system. In today’s world of expanding technology, speaking to families about illness and injury should not be delegated to a child, non-medical interpreters or someone who is not trained or certified as a bilingual/bicultural medical interpreter/medical assistant. In an increasingly multilingual, multicultural society, providing safe, high-quality health care requires overcoming the “communication triple threat” of low heath literacy, cultural barriers, and limited English proficiency. JRivera Associates was created specifically to remove health communication barriers related to language, cultural differences and low health literacy in the Latino Community.

Differentiate Your Organization in the Market Place as the Quality Leader Be the quality leader provider to the Latino market place by increasing compliance with care plans to reduce this populations higher than average risk of:

• Cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and strokes: This is due to a lack of management of hypertension, diabetes, obesity and other factors.
• Cancer rates: By promoting compliance with preventative screening measure quality indicators of mammography, cervical, pap, colorectal and immunization rates.

Outcomes of Outreach Services of JRivera Associates:

• Patient compliance with medical/diagnostic screening appointments
• Meet and exceed quality goals
• Reduce “Fail to Keep” rate of clinic appointments
• Increase doctor/patient satisfaction
• Improved front office productivity

1. The Joint Commission. Root causes of sentinel events. Available at: http://www.jointcommission.org/sentinel_event_statistics/

2. Divi C, Koss RG, Schmaltz SP, Loeb JM. Language proficiency and adverse events in U.S. hospitals: a pilot study. Int J Qual Health Care. 2007; 19:60–67. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17277013