Language and Culture Resource Center
The Language and Culture Resource Center provides an all-in-one resource to ensure high-quality linguistic and culturally sensitive health care interactions between patients, their families and their clinicians at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center.
The Center is a unique language interpreter and translation service. It was created to better meet the needs of the medical center’s patients and their families, who come from linguistically and ethnically varied backgrounds that reflect the broad diversity of Southern California’s population.
Services
The Language and Culture Resource Center works with Rancho staff, patients and their families to facilitate effective communication among people from different cultural and language backgrounds. The Center coordinates all requests for interpretation, provides language and culture-based training for both bilingual staff and caregivers, and oversees translation of patient education materials. It also serves as a clearinghouse for cultural resources, lending to patients periodicals and books in their native languages, connecting both patients and caregivers with ethnic and cultural resources in the community, and providing caregivers with cultural information that will enhance the care of individual patients.
A key function of the Center is organizing and increasing the efficiency of Rancho’s language resources. It maintains a centralized database of all bilingual Rancho employees, community volunteers and private interpreter agencies and offers interpreter skills training for bilingual staff members.
Recognition
The Center has been recognized with many honors for its innovative work. These include the 2001 Spirit of Diversity Award, conferred by the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Office of Diversity programs, the 2002 California Association of Public Hospital and Health Systems for Management Excellence, the 2004 Multi-Cultural Diversity Special Achievement Award by the Los Angeles County Office of Affirmative Actions, the 2004 Los Angeles County Productivity and Quality Award, and the 2006 Language Access Technology Leadership Award by the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems and Safety Net Institute. In addition, a number of newspaper and magazine articles have featured the Language and Culture Resource Center’s groundbreaking work.
Grants Awarded
Rancho received a grant from the Los Angeles County Productivity Investment Fund as a start-up cost to establish the Language and Culture Resource Center in 2001, and to implement wireless technology system to enhance interpreter accessibility.
In 2005, Rancho's Language and Culture Resource Center received a grant from "Leading Organization Change", a program funded by the California Endowment and a partnership between the California Association of Public Hospitals and University of California, San Francisco. The funding is used for implementing the Video Medical Interpreter (VMI) Program, which allows patients and healthcare providers in remote parts of the hospital to view their trained interpreter. Rancho is the first hospital in Southern California and first among the Rehab hospitals in the world to implement VMI.
Click here to view the Project Poster Board Summary.
In 2006, Rancho received grants from the California Health Care Safety Net Institute to serve as a "Reviewer Hospital and "Implementer Hospital" for language access policies and procedures and best practices, as a effort to position California public hospitals as national leaders in the provision of culturally appropriate services for Limited English Proficient patients.
Using advanced technologies to increase patients' and health care providers' access to interpreting service, the Language and Culture Resource Center continues to expand and improve Rancho's ability to provide culturally sensitive and effective clinical care.
For more information:
Lily Wong, M.A., M.B.A.
Director, Language and Culture Resource Center
E-Mail: LCR@rancho.org
Telephone: (562) 401-7427 / Fax: (562) 401-6347 / TTY: (562)
401-8450 or (562) 401-6359