UMass Memorial Well being (UMMH) has built-in a language interpretation app into its Epic EHR to offer on-demand entry to a community of 20,000 medical interpreters for greater than 240 languages.
The LanguageLine SMART-on-FHIR-based app is embedded instantly within the Epic charting utility used broadly for affected person appointments, which the corporate says streamlines processes and enhances take care of various populations in UMMH’s areas of service.
In 2023, Worcester, Mass.-based UMMH sufferers spoke 108 completely different languages, resulting in over six million minutes of interpretation. LanguageLine Options says its app simplifies the method of connecting with an interpreter and ensures automated, correct information assortment for billing, compliance audits, and reimbursement alternatives, permitting clinicians to focus solely on the affected person’s care plan and outcomes.
Integrating into Epic permits classes to be encrypted and documented within the EHR, which delivers a document of the affected person’s interpretation historical past. For UMMH, LanguageLine mentioned it developed a versatile methodology that permits the well being system’s know-how workforce to configure and make modifications to the combination on their very own.
“We’re happy to supply this new useful resource to assist create a greater care expertise for our sufferers, whereas bettering efficiencies for our scientific groups,” mentioned Eric Alper, M.D., chief high quality officer and chief scientific informatics officer at UMMH, in an announcement. “Developments on this space help our mission to enhance well being fairness by means of our technological capabilities and the care we offer to our communities.”
A single click on from Epic’s Haiku, Canto or Rover app mechanically launches LanguageLine’s app with the affected person’s info and most well-liked language already chosen. Connecting with a LanguageLine interpreter sometimes takes lower than 15 seconds, the corporate mentioned. Video and audio-only codecs are provided, and no appointment is required. The service is out there 24 hours a day, seven days every week.
After an interpretation session is full, LanguageLine writes again key information together with language requested, name length, and interpreter identification to clinic notes, stream sheets, and different information storage areas in Epic—automating a course of that clinicians had beforehand full manually. Constructing this interpreter-session historical past right into a affected person’s document helps suppliers guarantee compliance with rules outlined in Part 1557 of the Affected person Safety and Reasonably priced Care Act.
“The Epic integration is a testomony to the ability of partnership,” LanguageLine President and CEO Scott W. Klein mentioned in an announcement. “Not solely was it a detailed collaboration between the UMMH know-how workforce and ours, however we spent appreciable time interviewing docs, nurses, and different scientific employees to raised perceive the workflow concerned in serving sufferers who converse restricted English, or who’re Deaf or Onerous of Listening to.”
UMass Memorial Well being is the most important nonprofit well being system in Central Massachusetts with 17,000 workers and a pair of,100 physicians. Its system contains UMass Memorial Medical Heart, UMass Memorial Well being – Harrington, UMass Memorial Well being – HealthAlliance-Clinton Hospital, UMass Memorial Well being – Marlborough Hospital, UMass Memorial Well being – Group Healthlink, and UMass Memorial Medical Group.
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