Cultural Competency: A National Health Concern Provider Types Affected Background Cultural competency, or the ability of health care providers to work effectively with colleagues and patients in cross-cultural situations, is a vital component of professional competence. Culturally competent practice can offer a variety of benefits to health care providers and their organizations, including:
Highlights of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Activities to Address Health Disparities To ensure that providers are prepared for the challenges they face to deliver the right care to every person every time, CMS’s Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) are working with healthcare providers to become more effective and culturally aware of how they provide care to diverse populations. As part of a national initiative, QIOs are recruiting health providers to participate in a FREE online (Web-based) program, A Family Physician’s Practical Guide to Culturally Competent Care, to ensure that Medicare providers are prepared to effectively serve the increasingly diverse patient population. QIOs have adopted the Guide as the “program of choice” for health care provider cultural competency education. The Guide is an innovative educational product designed to equip health care providers with the cultural and linguistic competencies required to improve the quality of care for minority, immigrant, and ethnically diverse communities. A Family Physician’s Practical Guide to Culturally Competent Care is anchored in the three themes of the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health Care (CLAS) and serves a key initiative in helping the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health to achieve its mission of “improving the health of racial and ethnic minority populations through the development of effective health policies and programs that help to eliminate disparities in health care.” A Family Physician’s Practical Guide to Culturally Competent Care is a case study-based curriculum, featuring video vignettes and a diverse group of providers and clinic staff at a fictional practice setting, that reinforce learning points throughout the modules. Participants can also share their reactions to the case studies in an online bulletin board feature. This program was designed with the busy health care provider in mind, offering “anytime, anywhere” continuing education credit in an engaging and innovative format. This curriculum is available to all health care providers at http://www.thinkculturalhealth.org/ Please visit http://www.thinkculturalhealth.org/ Additional Information The National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) in Health Care are available at http://www.omhrc.gov/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=2&lvlID=15. For more information about the QIO cultural competency initiative, please visit http://www.qsource.org/uqiosc/. Additional information about the Office of Minority Health is available at http://www.omhrc.gov/. Disclaimer MLN Matters Number: SE0621 |
. The program is accredited for Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits for physicians and Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for nurses and pharmacists.
