Mercy Health Partners and Saint Mary's Health Care
Muskegon, Mich.

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Mercy Health Partners and Saint Mary's Health Care were hand-picked by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to participate in the Aligning Forces for Quality Hospital Quality Network (AF4Q Hospital Quality Network). Comprising over 130 hospitals and the best minds in the field, this network is designed to address improving the quality, efficiency and equity of care delivered in hospitals across the country and will work to bring the best practices to West Michigan.

Mercy Health Partners (MHP) and Saint Mary's Health Care will be participating in the Improving Language Services component of the AF4Q Hospital Quality Network. As the 2000 U.S. Census shows that 18 percent of people speak a language other than English in their homes, this participation will position our two hospitals to improve safety and quality of care for our limited English-proficiency patients. Between July 2009 and July 2010, MHP experienced more than 1,100 interpreting encounters, with the most common involving American Sign Language, Spanish, Bosnian, Vietnamese or Arabic, while Saint Mary's interpreting encounters most often involve Spanish, Vietnamese, Somali, Burmese, Nepali or Bosnian.

Saint Mary's and MHP will work to ensure that these patients receive both an initial assessment and discharge instruction from qualified language services providers and will screen admitted patients for preferred spoken and written language. Staff from both hospitals will lead efforts that improve the quality and safety of patient care by piloting and testing new quality improvement strategies over an 18-month period. Staff will collect and submit data, which will be subdivided by patient race, ethnicity and/or language. This program will empower our staff to improve the delivery and availability of language services while developing and spreading replicable quality improvement strategies that can help health care providers across the country.

The Language Collaborative is part of Aligning Forces for Quality, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's signature effort to lift the overall quality of health care in targeted communities, and to reduce racial and ethnic disparities and provide models for national reform. In all, 17 regions in the country have been designated as part of Aligning Forces.