By Chelsea Hart, Client Services Manager from The Kaleidoscope Group

Why should healthcare providers care about diversity?

If you type "Diversity in healthcare" into a search engine, you will get thousands of hits. This large number is due to the recent increase of interest in the diversity business case for the healthcare industry. Hospital administrators are now interested in how diversity or cultural competence can affect the bottom line for a hospital.

Accommodating Patient Diversity
In a nation of three hundred million people, there is going to be diversity. Considering that at one point in time most of these millions of people will become patients, addressing this diversity is now a priority for healthcare providers. The more "traditional" reason that hospitals seek information around diversity is because of the increasing diversity of their staff. Diversity is now being recognized as an integral part of business.

One of the most common themes with our healthcare clients, as well as with clients in other industries, is the need for the workforce to mirror the community being served. When patients visit a hospital, they want to feel welcomed by seeing familiar people working within the hospital. Also, having community members within the facility assists in enhancing the hospital's reputation. By developing a good reputation within the community for having an effective and diverse workforce, you become more attractive to new potential patients, thus affecting your bottom line.

Providing Fair Patient Service
Historically, there have been healthcare disparities in quality of service based on ethnic and racial background. In the seminal report Unequal Treatment, by the Institute of Medicine, racial disparities were found ranging from the provider, the health plan, and to the care offered by the institution. As a result of these disparities, recent state legislation requires doctors to experience some form of "Cultural Competence" training that will assist them in treating diverse patients.

The Cultural Competence training that is required by the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) requires five domains be covered: (1) Cultural Competence - the rationale, context, and definition; (2) Aspects of Cultural Competence; (3) Understanding the Impact of Stereotyping in Medical Decision Making; (4) Health Disparities and Factors Affecting Health; and (5) Cross-Cultural Clinical Skills. These topics are covered in order to provide informed and fair care to diverse patients.

Providing Superior Patient Service
Providing exceptional patient service is always the top priority of any healthcare provider. In order to provide the best patient service, it is important to understand the patient's needs as well as having the necessary mechanisms in place to support diversity. Often healthcare providers lacking a support mechanism is one of the largest barriers to diversity.

One of the most important yet overlooked variables in patient service is preferred language. According to the American Hospital Association's annual survey, about 40% of hospitals surveyed did not collect data regarding the patient's primary language. However, even in the case that this information was understood, adequate translation services were not available.

Translators are one of the most commonly understaffed positions in a hospital. Because of the lack of availability, a staff member representing another department (and already under stress with their responsibilities) is asked to conduct the translation. There are too many chances of errors in translations that can be crucial to helping the patients. In addition, using family members or friends to translate violates patient confidentiality rights.

In September of 2006, New York made it mandatory for all patients to be offered translating services in order to minimize complications from translation. However, patients may still choose to translate through a friend or family member over the age of 16, once they refuse the hospital translator.

What are healthcare providers doing to address diversity?

As previously mentioned, the AAMC requires that all students have cultural competency integrated through their curriculum and some states are now requiring that doctors participate in cultural competency training. Having cultural competency training within your hospital/healthcare facility is a great step to address diversity; however, it cannot stand on its own. Even if the doctors understand how to deal with diverse patients, assuming that the training is effective; there are still multiple elements of the total patient care package that should have the same understanding in order to provide superior patient care.

Within healthcare facilities, there are a variety of areas that impact patient care. Without adequately addressing diversity in all of these areas, patients still may not receive equal care. Providing education to all of the employees and doctors of the facility will not create sustainable change because there are many organizational factors that should be addressed when integrating diversity into your organization. These factors include: (1) workforce, (2) workplace, (3) community, (4) marketplace, and (5) supplier.

What should healthcare providers do to address diversity?

The Diversity Journey: KG Systemic Cultural Change Model

The Kaleidoscope Group, L.L.C. approach to diversity is to involve all stakeholders in the journey, which inspires commitment and links directly to the uniqueness of the organization's culture. Our process supports organizations at every stage as they effectively navigate the journey. The Diversity Journey is a systemic cultural change model that provides sustainable change by using a systemic approach. The Journey is comprised of (a) Diversity Vision of Success; (b) Diversity Assessment; (c) Diversity Strategy; (d) Feedback; (e) Diversity Education; (f) Commitment; (g) Accountability and Measurement; and (h) Engaging Leadership.

Vision of Success
We help develop or revise a diversity vision of success. The diversity vision of success creates the case for change that directs the overall diversity strategy.

Assessment
In order to create an effective diversity strategy, it is vital to understand the current state of diversity within the organization. Therefore, we conduct assessments in five diversity strategic areas of focus: workforce, workplace, marketplace, community and diverse suppliers, as needed, to understand the strengths and barriers impacting diversity success. We also assess the effectiveness of existing diversity initiatives, practices and strategy, and make recommendations to improve results.

Strategy
The purpose of the strategy is to provide a holistic approach and solutions. Thus, using your business or strategic goals, we help establish and/or refine diversity goals, timelines, and action plans that will achieve real change and enhance business success.

Feedback
Communication is vital to a successful organization. With this in mind, we strategically share the vision of success, assessment results, and the diversity strategy with organization stakeholders so that everyone understands the road to success and their roles and responsibilities.

Education
Educating the workforce is vital to increasing inclusive behaviors and creating a more inclusive and respectful work environment. To that end, we design and implement the appropriate education strategy based on organizational needs and evaluate success and business impact. Diversity & inclusion education can integrate the topics required by governing bodies to fulfill cultural competency education requirements.

Commitment
To sustain diversity success over time, we help implement an ongoing diversity communication strategy, diversity council(s), employee resource groups, people and business process linkages, and stakeholder strategic actions.

Accountability & Measurement
In order to assess the success of the diversity initiatives and the organizational impacts, we help develop a diversity scorecard to ensure that accountability is established and progress on the journey is monitored and measured.

Engaging Leadership
A vital part of the journey is engaging leadership throughout the journey to ensure buy-in, support, and to develop diversity champions.

For more information on The Kaleidoscope Group, L.L.C services, contact 1.312.274.9000 or visit www.webkg.com.