Within months of implementing ServiceHub, after helping to craft many of its new features, Steward Health Care has gained control of its Interpreter Services offering, vastly improving efficiency and making all of their jobs more rewarding.  Steward Health Care, formerly known as Caritas Christi, is a collection of 10 hospitals throughout eastern Massachusetts (and expanding).  Supporting more than a dozen languages with in-house interpreters, depending on the individual hospital, managing this flow of patient services was nothing short of stressful.  Adding additional hospitals as fast as management was planning to, made this situation even more challenging.

Carla Fogaren RN, System Director of Diversity Initiatives and Interpreter Services at Steward, had heard about ServiceHub from a colleague while attending a recent IMIA conference in Boston.  She immediately began her due diligence and built a master plan to rein in one of her most demanding responsibilities.  Taking “No” for an answer was simply not part of her plan.  Aaron Lemmon, Coordinator of Interpreter Services, was tasked to “make it happen.”  Boundaries crumbled and melted away at every turn, until the master plan was completed.  Her contemporaries at Steward will tell you that Carla is a force to be reckoned with.  ServiceHub now knows that all too well — and is grateful for its partnership with Steward, Carla and her staff.

Boundaries?  What boundaries?  ServiceHub  now accommodates multiple institutions within a single administrative account.  Steward management can see and report on activity across all institutions, while each institution can operate independently.  With an eye to the future, institutions will be able to manage shared resources (such as phone or video interpretation).  ServiceHub  now supports requests for multiple languages, and the choice of available languages can be dependent on the individual institution.  Though not the first customer to want the ability to manage future appointments requiring interpreters, Steward raised the efficiency and flexibility of this feature for its clinical staff.  And Carla’s master plan?  It’s being expanded (of course).  There are more boundaries to push through.

Just what did all of this effort yield for Steward?  In a matter of months of operating with ServiceHub, response times were reduced by 50-60%.  At some hospitals, the number of interpreter requests were more than doubled.  To say that Carla and her staff were pleased would be an understatement.  But the benefits went way beyond impressive statistics.  The relief from chaos that is associated with poor communication and inefficiencies was palpable.  The job of being an interpreter became more pleasant:  the pride of better performance enhanced the sense of professionalism.  Managers finally had the tools they needed to manage.  If you think any of this is an overstatement, you are invited to ask Carla and Aaron yourself.  Speaking for ServiceHub, this has been an awesome experience.

www.steward.org/interpreters