Language Line Services Partners with Manhattan Cross Cultural Group and Quality Interactions to Provide Innovative Tools to Improve Healthcare for Diverse Patient Populations

MONTEREY, Calif. and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Language Line Services, the worldwide leader in interpreting and translation services, today announced a partnership with the Manhattan Cross Cultural Group (MCCG), creators of Quality Interactions, to help healthcare organizations provide the highest quality care to their culturally and linguistically diverse patients. MCCG, based in Cambridge, Mass., developed Quality Interactions, a portfolio of e-learning and blended learning programs designed to improve the capacity of healthcare professionals -- including doctors, nurses, and front-line staff -- to communicate more effectively with patients and colleagues of diverse backgrounds.

"Language services and cross-cultural communication go hand-in-hand, and Language Line Services shares our commitment to improving patient care and eliminating healthcare disparities in increasingly diverse populations," said Dr. Joseph R. Betancourt, co-founder of MCCG. "With our combined expertise, we will provide healthcare organizations with the best resources and technologies to take healthcare to the next level."

"We recognized the critical need for our staff to be culturally competent, and mandated the completion of Quality Interactions for our internal clinical staff, and then later made it available to our network providers. It's tops in the industry, with a proven track record and extensive use nationwide," said Wayne Rawlins, MD, MBA, Aetna National Medical Director, Racial and Ethnic Equality Initiative. Aetna has been a longstanding client of MCCG and user of Quality Interactions, dating back to 2003.

The partnership with MCCG makes Language Line Services the only language services provider to offer such a large suite of training products for healthcare professionals on cultural and linguistic competency -- a rapidly growing need as the nation becomes more diverse, the number of limited-English speakers in the United States continues to rise, and regulations and accreditation standards begin to mandate training in this field.

Language Line Services and MCCG will begin offering these combined services effective immediately to customers including hospitals, health plans, as well as schools that train health professionals in medicine, nursing, dentistry, and pharmacy, among others.

"Partnering with MCCG was an easy decision as we continue to advocate for specialized linguistic and cultural training for healthcare professionals in this country," said Louis F. Provenzano, Jr., President and CEO of Language Line Services, the largest provider of language solutions for the U.S. healthcare industry. "Communication breakdowns are responsible for nearly 3,000 unexpected deaths and catastrophic injuries annually, often with limited-English speakers. Quality Interactions goes beyond teaching about ethnicity and nationality to empowering healthcare providers with a framework to better understand and address diversity of religion, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation and other issues that can create barriers to effective communication and quality care. We are proud to be part of that effort."

Both Language Line Services and MCCG are industry leaders. Language Line Services created the over-the-phone interpreting industry almost 30 years ago and fields thousands of interpreting calls daily from healthcare providers, led by the majority of the top 50 U.S. healthcare organizations. MCCG developed Quality Interactions -- the first interactive e-learning cross-cultural communication program -- in 2003 and has worked with top hospitals, health plans, and health professions institutions to train close to 100,000 healthcare professionals across the country.

To learn more about Quality Interactions' portfolio of e-learning programs visit http://www.languageline.com/page/qi/.

About MCCG

Manhattan Cross Cultural Group is a training and consulting organization committed to improving healthcare to diverse patient populations and eliminating health disparities. MCCG -- founded by Drs. Joseph Betancourt, Alexander Green and Emilio Carrillo, three practicing physicians and thought-leaders in the field of cross-cultural healthcare -- created Quality Interactions, a portfolio of e-learning programs developed to provide healthcare professionals with skills to improve cross-cultural communication. Collectively, the founders have worked with top governmental agencies, leading hospitals, foundations, and health plans to further the goal of achieving high quality care for all patients. For more information, visit http://www.qualityinteractions.org/.

About Language Line Services

Language Line Services, the global leader in telephone interpreting and language solutions, serves clients in government, healthcare, telecommunications, financial services, utilities, insurance and many other industries by quickly connecting them to their customers, patients and sales prospects in more than 170 spoken languages as well as American Sign Language (ASL) and Mexican Sign Language (LSM). Language Line Services, cofounder of The National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters (http://www.certifiedmedicalinterpreters.org/), is recognized as a trusted partner to thousands of public and private organizations throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, providing easy access to the industry's fastest language interpreting service at highly competitive rates. For more information about Language Line Services' suite of telephone, on-site and video interpreting, document translation, interpreter assessment and training programs, please call (800) 752-6096 or visit http://www.languageline.com/.

Contact:
Trent Freeman
Olmstead Williams Communications
310.824.9000
[email protected]
http://www.olmsteadwilliams.com

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SOURCE Language Line Services; Manhattan Cross Cultural Group