Chair Files

IPOP Reduces Disparities

Joseph Betancourt, M.D., director of multicultural education for Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, emphasized that hospitals don't have to break the bank to better serve diverse populations. At the recent AHA/Health Forum Leadership Summit, Betancourt said that Mass General administrators noticed that patients who didn't speak English as a first language were often helped by interpreters in one-on-one sessions with clinicians, but they often experienced problems when they were alone in their beds and unable to effectively communicate with staff. So the hospital linked up with an off-site telephone interpreter service, and hooked up phones with conference call capabilities to poles next to patient beds. The solution wasn't expensive, Betancourt said, but it worked. "We call it IPOP, or interpreter on a pole," Betancourt said to hearty laughs from the audience. For more information, contact Joseph Betancourt at jbetancourt@partners.org.

  

Additional Resources

Webinars December 13th, 2017

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Webinars November 20th, 2017

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Webinars November 17th, 2017

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