The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently settled two investigations into health care providers that failed to provide proper communication services for deaf patients. Federal law requires any medical facility receiving federal funding to provide free, qualified sign language interpreters or other technical aids to ensure patients with disabilities can understand their medical care. In these cases, a psychiatric hospital in Puerto Rico failed to provide an interpreter for a mental health evaluation, and a health system in the Midwest forced a pregnant patient to bring her own interpreter while using faulty video equipment during her labor. OCR emphasized that failing to communicate effectively is not only a violation of civil rights but a serious safety risk that can lead to life-threatening medical errors.<\/p>\n
To resolve these violations, San Juan Capestrano Hospital and Essentia Health West have agreed to make system-wide changes to comply with federal disability laws. Both organizations must now provide qualified interpreters quickly and free of charge, ensure all video interpreting technology functions without technical glitches, and train their staff on how to assist patients who are deaf or hard of hearing. Additionally, they must appoint a civil rights coordinator to oversee these changes and implement a process to document a patient\u2019s specific communication needs at the start of their care so that those needs are met during every future visit.<\/p>\n
OCR will monitor implementation of the settlement agreement with San Juan Capestrano Hospital for two years. The agreement can be found at\u00a0https:\/\/www.hhs.gov\/civil-rights\/for-providers\/compliance-enforcement\/agreements\/sjch-settlement-agreement\/index.html<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n OCR will monitor implementation of the resolution agreement with Essentia Health West for one year.\u00a0The agreement can be found at\u00a0https:\/\/www.hhs.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/vra-with-essentia-health-west.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"policy_whats_new_category":[64],"class_list":["post-1793","whats-new","type-whats-new","status-publish","hentry","policy_whats_new_category-healthcare"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncfla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/whats-new\/1793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncfla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/whats-new"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncfla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/whats-new"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ncfla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/whats-new\/1793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1804,"href":"https:\/\/ncfla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/whats-new\/1793\/revisions\/1804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncfla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"policy_whats_new_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncfla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/policy_whats_new_category?post=1793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}