Verizon Gives Back to Miller Children's

Verizon recently gave Miller Children’s Hospital Long Beach a $24,500 grant to support the hospital’s Interpreter Services – which is especially important for many limited English proficient (LEP) patients and their families at Miller Children’s to understand and participate in healthcare decisions in their primary language.

Specifically, funding will enable Miller Children's to pay for a part-time Spanish-speaking interpreter (three to six month tenure), provide members of Miller Children’s care team with specific tools and professional training to enhance language, cultural awareness and communication skills. Most importantly, the grant will allow for the installation of an additional Video Interpreter Connection (VIC) unit to facilitate efficient and competent interpretation.

This Video Interpreter Connection – referred to as VIC - is essentially a portable workstation on wheels, with a monitor, web cam and screen that gives the care team, patient, and family access to a real-life trained Spanish interpreter, who is experienced in health care information and interpreting. The service functions much like Skype® where the patient and family can see the interpreter and the interpreter can see them. The nurse or doctor can say the information in English, the interpreter through VIC can then relay the information back to the patient and family in Spanish.

“Visual communication is crucial when discussing medical information to parents that relates to their child’s health,” says Maggie De La Torre, manager, Customer & Interpreter Services at Miller Children’s and Long Beach Memorial. “The interpreter can clearly see through the monitor if the parent doesn’t understand or needs to ask further questions. This helps ensure that parents are well prepared for care of their child at home and helps bridge any gaps in communication between the care team and parents.”

Three different “VICs” have been piloted throughout Miller Children’s - including two in the outpatient clinics. The care team can wheel VIC throughout the hospital traveling to bedsides or to different rooms in outpatient clinics and interpret medical information in real-time. With this grant from Verizon and a previous grant, two new VIC connections will be added to the Miller Children’s Outpatient Specialty Centers.

“VIC cuts down on Interpreter wait times, since the care team doesn’t need to wait for an interpreter to travel to the location where the patient and families are,” says De La Torre. “This is especially important in the outpatient setting, where we don’t always have the ability to get interpreters over to those clinics off-site and out of the hospital. Also, knowing that the Interpreter is a member of our organization and knows our hospital well is an added bonus.”

The pilot program has been so well received by the health care team and families, that plans to add additional VICs (beyond the five they have now) to Miller Children’s are in the works. But in the meantime, one thing is for certain - doctors and nurses, consider “him” to be just as an important member of their health care team.