CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT Over-the-Phone Interpreting Helps Children's Medical Center to Break through Language Barriers and to Provide Equal Healthcare Access The Children's Medical Center system, located in Dallas, Texas, is comprised of two full-service pediatric hospitals that serve children through nearly 570,000 patient visists annually. Children's is the seventh largest pediatric healthcare provider in the nation, specializing in the care of children from birth to age 18. To better serve its ethnically-diverse patient community, Children's established a Language Access Services program in 1993. For more than 17 years, the Language Access Services Program team has diligently worked to hone the program to offer Limited English Proficient patients (LEPs) with equal access to high-quality health care. 
Steward Health Care Teams with Pacific Interpreters to Serve Limited-English Patients Steward Health Care is a community-based hospital network headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Currently comprised of eight facilities, Steward has 14,000 employees and serves more than one million patients annually. We spoke with Aaron Lemmon, Coordinator for Interpreter Services and Carla Fogaren, RN, System Director of Diversity Initiatives and Interpreter Services, to learn more about the company and why they use Pacific Interpreters exclusively for over-the-phone interpreting (OPI) calls totaling over 11,000 minutes per month.
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| “Clear communication is critical to my work, and I use Pacific Interpreters every day to improve our language access capabilities. My patients have been very receptive to using this service, as it allows us to communicate more clearly and accurately. I have received excellent service from both the customer service agents and interpreters at Pacific Interpreters, finding them to be very helpful and professional. As a Spanish speaker myself, I especially appreciate the interpreters’ flexibility to allow me to speak directly to my patients in Spanish, standing by to help clarify or interpret only as needed.”
Jane Kaplan, RD, CDN, Public Health Nutritionist, New Cassel/Westbury Health Center |
| “Using OPI is essential for our ability to stay connected with the growing and increasingly diverse LEP population in Massachusetts. We aim to provide the best quality care possible. Pacific Interpreters excels at both professionalism and technical assistance. You can’t put a price on good customer service.” Carla Fogaren, RN, System Director of Diversity Initiatives and Interpreter Services, Steward Health Care |