<aside> 📢 To comply with IRB regulations and ethical guidelines, information related to that of patients, providers, and staff members and confidential information of Institute of Healthcare Delivery Design has been obfuscated. Information provided in the following case study is written by Yong Hee Yoo (me) and does not necessarily reflect the views of Institute of Healthcare Delivery Design.

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• Word glossary

Specialty Care Building (SCB) at University of Illinois Health. Photo by SCB.com

Background

With the United States being the country with the most foreign-born residents in the world,$^2$ it is to no surprise that the diversity of language has grown exponentially within the last few decades. With more than 37 million Spanish speakers nationwide, Spanish ranked first amongst foreign languages in the United States.$^3$

Limited English proficiency (LEP) describes individuals who do not speak English as their primary language and who have a limited ability to read, speak, write, or understand English. Patients with LEP have been shown to report poor communication with their provider, receive lower quality of care, have higher rates of misdiagnoses, and have significantly more emergency department visits and re-hospitalizations. At the Illinois Eye & Ear Infirmary, ~50,000 Spanish speaking patient visits were conducted in our clinics between September 2020 and March 2022, making it the top language amongst patient populations besides English.

Specialty Care Building (SCB) lobby at UI Health. Photo by today.UIC.edu

Project Brief

Overview

Throughout the project duration, we seek to understand:

1. Patient satisfaction, challenges, barriers, and facilitators with their journey in ophthalmology being Spanish speaking with LEP and with the use of professional interpreter services.
2. Provider and staff satisfaction, challenges, and barriers with using professional interpreter services for Spanish speaking patients with LEP.
3. Create an innovation pipeline to increase satisfaction rates as well as retention rates amongst LEP patients visiting Specialty Care Building at UI Health.

My role