OBJECTIVES: Racial/ethnic disparities in health in the U.S. have been well described. The field of "cultural competence" has emerged as one strategy to address these disparities. Based on a review of the relevant literature, the authors develop a definition of cultural competence, identify key components for intervention, and describe a practical framework for implementation of measures to address racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care.

METHODS: The authors conducted a literature review of academic, foundation, and government publications focusing on sociocultural barriers to care, the level of the health care system at which a given barrier occurs, and cultural competence efforts that address these barriers.

RESULTS: Sociocultural barriers to care were identified at the organizational (leadership/workforce), structural (processes of care), and clinical (provider-patient encounter) levels. A framework of cultural competence interventions--including minority recruitment into the health professions, development of interpreter services and language-appropriate health educational materials, and provider education on cross-cultural issues--emerged to categorize strategies to address racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care.

CONCLUSIONS: Demographic changes anticipated over the next decade magnify the importance of addressing racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care. A framework of organizational, structural, and clinical cultural competence interventions can facilitate the elimination of these disparities and improve care for all Americans.

Defining cultural competence: a practical framework for addressing racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care.

Advances in medical, biomedical and health services research have reduced the level of uncertainty in clinical practice. Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) complement this progress by establishing standards of care backed by strong scientific evidence. CPGs are statements that include recommendations intended to optimize patient care. These statements are informed by a systematic review of evidence and an assessment of the benefits and costs of alternative care options. Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust examines the current state of clinical practice guidelines and how they can be improved to enhance healthcare quality and patient outcomes. Clinical practice guidelines now are ubiquitous in our healthcare system. The Guidelines International Network (GIN) database currently lists more than 3,700 guidelines from 39 countries. Developing guidelines presents a number of challenges including lack of transparent methodological practices, difficulty reconciling conflicting guidelines, and conflicts of interest. Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust explores questions surrounding the quality of CPG development processes and the establishment of standards. It proposes eight standards for developing trustworthy clinical practice guidelines emphasizing transparency; management of conflict of interest; systematic review--guideline development intersection; establishing evidence foundations for and rating strength of guideline recommendations; articulation of recommendations; external review; and updating. Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust shows how clinical practice guidelines can enhance clinician and patient decision-making by translating complex scientific research findings into recommendations for clinical practice that are relevant to the individual patient encounter, instead of implementing a one size fits all approach to patient care. This book contains information directly related to the work of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), as well as various Congressional staff and policymakers. It is a vital resource for medical specialty societies, disease advocacy groups, health professionals, private and international organizations that develop or use clinical practice guidelines, consumers, clinicians, and payers.

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Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust

Evaluating the quality of medical care.

According to the 2000 Census, 47 million people in the United States speak a language other than English at home (Shin and Bruno 2003). Half of these individuals report that they speak English less than “very well.” These individuals are considered to have limited English proficiency (LEP). That is, they are not able to speak, read, write, or understand the English language at a level that permits them to interact effectively with health care providers (OCR 2002). This language barrier puts the health of many LEP individuals, and that of their communities at risk by affecting their ability to access care and communicate with their providers.

It is well established that language barriers contribute to health disparities for LEP patients (Jacobs et al. 2003). These patients have less access to a usual source of care, and lower rates of physician visits and preventive services (Fox and Stein 1991; Kirkman-Liff and Mondragon 1991; Woloshin et al. 1997; Fiscella et al. 2002). Even when they do have access to care, LEP patients often have poorer adherence to treatment and follow-up for chronic illnesses, decreased comprehension of their diagnoses and treatment after emergency department (ED) visits, decreased satisfaction with care, and increased medication complications. (Manson 1988; Crane 1997; Carasquillo et al. 1999; Gandhi et al. 2000) In contrast, language concordance between patients and physicians increases patient satisfaction, patient-reported health status, and adherence with medication and follow-up visits (Manson 1988; Perez-Stable, Napoles-Springer, and Miramontes 1997; Freeman et al. 2002).

Given that over 100 languages are commonly spoken in the United States, (Shin and Bruno 2003) it is often not possible to provide language concordant health care. In one study of the use of medical interpreters in urban primary care practices, physicians reported encountering 20 different languages (Karliner, Perez-Stable, and Gildengorin 2004). Although some LEP patients are fortunate enough to be seen in settings where physician and office staff speak their primary language, this language concordance can readily disappear once these patients present for laboratory testing, emergency care, or are admitted to the hospital. Therefore, the majority of providers must use other means to communicate with their LEP patients and, if they receive federal financial assistance, are required to do so by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (OCR 2002). Most often this means is a third person, an interpreter, who can range from a highly trained professional medical interpreter to any available bilingual person (NCIHC 2001).

In their review and analysis of health plans and language assistance programs, (Brach, Fraser, and Paez 2005) recommend the use of professional interpreters to augment the use of bilingual clinicians and staff in order to improve the quality of care delivered and to decrease health disparities. A recent general review of the literature concludes that the quality of medical care is improved by either use of professional interpreters or via direct provision of care by bilingual health care providers (Flores 2005). These reviews are broad and inclusive; however, many of the studies from which they draw their conclusions combined the effects of different types of interpreters (ad hoc, trained, untrained) as well as that of language concordant clinicians without systematically distinguishing among them. Thus, we are still left with the question of the specific effect of professional interpreters on clinical care, and how their effect compares with that of ad hoc interpreters.

Building on these previous reviews, we conducted a focused systematic review of the medical literature to better understand whether use of professional medical interpreters is associated with improved clinical care for LEP patients in the areas of communication errors and patient comprehension, utilization, clinical outcomes, and satisfaction.

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Do professional interpreters improve clinical care for patients with limited english proficiency? A systematic review of the literature

It is a truism of health education that programs and interventions will be more effective when they are culturally appropriate for the populations they serve. In practice, however, the strategies used to achieve cultural appropriateness vary widely. This article briefly describes five strategies commonly used to target programs to culturally defined groups. It then explains how a sixth approach, cultural tailoring, might extend these strategies and enhance our ability to develop effective programs for cultural groups. The authors illustrate this new approach with an example of cultural tailoring for cancer prevention in a population of lower income urban African American women.

Achieving Cultural Appropriateness in Health Promotion Programs: Targeted and Tailored Approaches

This article develops a conceptual model of cultural competency's potential to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities, using the cultural competency and disparities literature to lay the foundation for the model and inform assessments of its validity. The authors identify nine major cultural competency techniques: interpreter services, recruitment and retention policies, training, coordinating with traditional healers, use of community health workers, culturally competent health promotion, including family/community members, immersion into another culture, and administrative and organizational accommodations. The conceptual model shows how these techniques could theoretically improve the ability of health systems and their clinicians to deliver appropriate services to diverse populations, thereby improving outcomes and reducing disparities. The authors conclude that while there is substantial research evidence to suggest that cultural competency should in fact work, health systems have little evidence about which cultural competency techniques are effective and less evidence on when and how to implement them properly.

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Can Cultural Competency Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities? A Review and Conceptual Model:

Interest in organizational contributions to the delivery of care has risen significantly in recent years. A challenge facing researchers, practitioners, and policy makers is identifying ways to improve care by improving the organizations that provide this care, given the complexity of health care organizations and the role organizations play in influencing systems of care. This article reviews the literature on the relationship between the structural characteristics and organizational processes of hospitals and quality of care. The review uses Donabedian's structure-process-outcome and level of analysis frameworks to organize the literature. The results of this review indicate that a preponderance of studies are conducted at the hospital level of analysis and are predominantly focused on the organizational structure-quality outcome relationship. The article concludes with recommendations of how health services researchers can expand their research to enhance one's understanding of the relationship between organizational characteristics and quality of care.

Review: how do hospital organizational structure and processes affect quality of care?: a critical review of research methods.

The quality of communication between patients and clinicians can have a major impact on health outcomes, and limited English proficiency can interfere with effective communication. More than ten million U.S. residents speak English poorly or not at all, constituting a language chasm in the health care system. This paper reviews the evidence on the link between linguistic competence and health care quality and the impact of particular language-assistance strategies. Drawing on the experiences of fourteen health plans that have been at the forefront of linguistic competence efforts, we identify lessons for plans, purchasers, policymakers, and researchers on ways to improve the availability and quality of interpreter services.

Crossing The Language Chasm

Finding ways to deliver high-quality health care to an increasingly diverse population is a major challenge for the American health care system. The persistence of racial and ethnic disparities in health care access, quality, and outcomes has prompted considerable interest in increasing the cultural competence of health care, both as an end in its own right and as a potential means to reduce disparities. This article reviews the potential role of cultural competence in reducing racial and ethnic health disparities, the strength of health care organizations' current incentives to adopt cultural competence techniques, and the limitations inherent in these incentives that will need to be overcome if cultural competence techniques are to become widely adopted.

Reducing disparities through culturally competent health care: an analysis of the business case.

Procedure volume has been used as a proxy for quality and recommended as a basis for hospital referrals. We studied the volume, mortality, and associated hospital and staffing characteristics of ten complex procedures in U.S. hospitals using the 2000 HCUP Nationwide Inpatient Sample. Although the majority of patients had their procedures performed in high-volume hospitals, for seven procedures, more than three-fourths of hospitals would be considered low-volume. Unadjusted mortality rates were significantly higher at low-volume hospitals for five procedures. Low-volume hospitals also tended to have lower mean numbers of residents and RNs. However, for two procedures, low-volume hospitals had RN and resident staffing equal to or higher than those of high-volume hospitals, and the unadjusted mortality rates were no different.

Irene Fraser

Papers

Can Cultural Competency Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities? A Review and Conceptual Model:

Review: how do hospital organizational structure and processes affect quality of care?: a critical review of research methods.

Crossing The Language Chasm

Reducing disparities through culturally competent health care: an analysis of the business case.

Volume thresholds and hospital characteristics in the United States