A new Joint Commission research report titled “One Size Does Not Fit All: Meeting the Health Care Needs of Diverse Populations,” urges health care organizations to assess their capacity to meet patients’ unique cultural and language needs. In its 2001 report “Crossing the Quality Chasm,” the Institute of Medicine identified patient-centered and equitable care as important elements of quality.
 
The Joint Commission report is based on successful practices now being used in hospitals, and underscores the need to move away from a “one size fits all” approach that negatively affects the quality and safety of care for diverse patients. The report includes a self-assessment tool that can help health care organizations tailor their initiatives to meet the needs of diverse populations. The tool addresses the main issues found in the report and provides a framework for discussing needs, resources and goals for providing the highest quality care to every patient served.

The report is the result of a multi-year research study, Hospitals, Language, and Culture: A Snapshot of the Nation supported by funding from The California Endowment. This study provided the first comprehensive examination of how hospitals in the United States respond to the diverse cultural and language needs of their patients. The study explored how 60 hospitals across the country provide care to culturally and linguistically diverse patient populations. This experience helped in developing the framework.

“Before meeting the treatment needs of patients, effective communication with them is needed to understand what the health problem is and how they wish to go about addressing that health problem,” says Mark R. Chassin, MD, president of The Joint Commission. “By using this framework, hospitals can assess their current practices and take action to treat each patient as a unique individual.”

“This report provides many useful examples of how hospitals are effectively addressing the cultural and language needs of their increasingly diverse patients,” says Robert Ross, MD, president and CEO of the California Endowment. “We hope that hospitals across the nation will adopt some of these practices and use the report’s self-assessment tool to improve the quality of care that their patients receive.” 

To access the complete text of “One Size Does Not Fit All: Meeting the Health Care Needs of Diverse Populations,” visit The Joint Commission website at www.jointcommission.org.