First Spanish-Speaking Virtual Clinic Launched
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
The portal connects Spanish-speaking patients and providers.
Telemedicine provider Carena has partnered with UleCare, an affiliate of University of Iowa Health Care, to launch a new virtual clinic for Spanish-speaking patients. According to a press release, the portal was designed to meet the needs of Iowa’s growing Latino population.
The virtual clinic at UleSalud.com will expand care to more than 170,000 Spanish-speaking individuals, connecting Spanish-speaking patients and providers with an option to use an interpreter when necessary.
“The launch of this new Spanish-language virtual clinic at UleSalud.com is a significant milestone in improving access,” Ralph C. Derrickson, CEO of Carena explained. “Like every other industry, healthcare has to adapt to the needs of the consumer. All healthcare is local and this is an example of how we’re partnering with innovative health systems to meet the needs of their patients.”
The virtual clinic provides care visits via phone or the Internet that usually last about 20 minutes. “When we decided to build out our virtual care capabilities with the launch of UleCare.com, we knew we needed to expand these services to reach Iowa’s large number of Spanish-speaking individuals,” Dr. Patrick Brophy, assistant vice president of eHealth & Innovation at University of Iowa Health Care told The Gazette. “This is a really important part of what UI Health Care needs to represent because the Spanish-speaking population is the fastest-growing demographic in Iowa.”
Healthcare Dive reports the decision is a strong one, noting the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says, “Race and ethnicity continue to influence a patient’s chances of receiving many specific healthcare interventions and treatments.” According to foundation estimates, Latinos and African-Americans experience 30 to 40 percent poorer health outcomes than white Americans, resulting not only in shortened lives and increased illness, but also creating systemic costs as well. RWJF data suggests health disparities between people of different race and ethnicity are responsible for over $60 billion in lost productivity each year.
And accessibility is a large part of the problem as 35 percent of Latinos and low-income individuals report having a hard time getting the care they need, compared to just 25 percent of white Americans. Hospitalization rates also demonstrate great disparity by race and ethnicity as well.
Earlier this year, Health IT Outcomes reported on the development of a new translator app that could help break the language barrier for emergency room physicians. Canopy App’s CEO, Jerrit Tan, said at the time, “The current ways of getting language interpreters are time consuming and inefficient as best, and nonexistent at worse. While most major hospitals have in-person interpreters or telephone interpreters, healthcare providers do not like using them because they are difficult to use. This leads to poor patient care, and increases risks for the healthcare systems. We know it has to start with the healthcare provider, so our goal is to make language translation services easier to use for them and to keep costs down for the healthcare system.
“We see this as the future of language translation and interpretation for healthcare – use a scalable library of translated medical content and when doing the routine things, and call an interpreter with ease if the situation becomes more complex or sensitive.”