Language World Lands DHCS Interpreter Pilot Project
New Program Will Bring Our Services to Los Angeles
Since the mid-2000s, there has been an organized effort at the California State Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to create a unique pilot program that sought to understand the nature of on-site and remotely delivered health care interpreting services throughout the state. The program began with a series of meetings with a variety of stakeholders from the medical interpreting industry, public employee union members, as well as state planners. The purpose was to learn more directly how interpreting happens, if at all, for the many millions of LEP patients in California. The DHCS commissioned study identified and analyzed several aspects of the profession. Research details covered the entire scope of the interpreter’s work and career formation in California. Topics such as how language tests were sourced, and available educational and training resources for this new state workforce were documented and inventoried.
Phase 2 of this project includes the awarding of pilot sites where the lessons learned from the study will be deployed in real-life scenarios of LEP patients and their medical providers. Language World was fortunate and very honored to be selected to be the manager of the pilot in Los Angeles. Throughout the 2-year scope of planning and service delivery, Language World will be recruiting, testing, training and dispatching a newfound workforce of healthcare interpreter professionals to gather data and provide much needed language access services to the diverse and often underserved populations of Limited English patients in Los Angeles. We are looking forward to reporting back on our progress, our challenges and the many wonderful people we hope to meet that are dedicated to the proposition of meaningful access to the critical healthcare information of the city’s vast Limited English communities.