Cultural Competence: Bridging the Gap for Better Patient Care

Many people think that a white male can’t speak on the topic of cultural competence. Many people are wrong. We’re all in this together, and the very concept of cultural awareness recognizes that all voices should be heard and can provide merit.

According to The Georgetown Health Policy Institute, “African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans, are more likely than Whites to report that they believe they would have received better care if they had been of a different race or ethnicity. African Americans are more likely than other minority groups to feel that they were treated disrespectfully during a health care visit (e.g., they were spoken to rudely, talked down to, or ignored). Compared to other minority groups, Asian Americans are least likely to feel that their doctor understood their background and values and are most likely to report that their doctor looked down on them.”

At a basic level, cultural competence in healthcare can be defined as organizations and providers recognizing that race, ethnicity, language, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic issues can affect how care is obtained and delivered. It doesn’t necessarily mean we, as individuals, understand all the issues, how could we? We all grew up in situations that are unique to us. Those situations may be that we were poor or wealthy, male or female, black or white or Hispanic or Asian, and a dozen other variables that make us who we are today. Make no mistake, who each of us are today is pretty damn impressive, and it's because of our differences! ??

While we may not fully understand each other, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try our best to do exactly that. In healthcare, and in life, it comes down to doing two things better:

#1 – Personalizing Care

Personalizing healthcare is not easy, but the payoff is tremendous. It has been proven to provide better outcomes, enhance the patient experience, and increase job satisfaction for providers.

Personalizing care may seem like a daunting task for health systems, because it’s not simply a mandate or piece of software to buy. Rather, personalized care starts by creating a culture of curiosity and openness, and it needs to have full buy-in from leadership. There’s no way to document every single thing we know about every single culture, so simply training on facts or differences in populations doesn’t do enough to bridge the culture gap; you also need to work on skills that are more universal and open-ended.

Here’s a few ways you can start to personalize the care experience for your health system:

1. Encourage providers to ask patients about themselves, and document what they learn to help themselves and others understand how to best understand the patient.
2. Realize that patients are individuals, not a diagnosis. Treat them as such.
3. Practice active listening by paying close attention to patients' concerns, questions, and preferences. This demonstrates empathy and fosters trust with the provider.
4. Showing empathy by acknowledging their emotions, concerns, and fears can help patients feel understood and supported.
5. Document and communicate in the patient’s preferred language whenever possible. If it’s not possible, be extra aware that some things may need to be explained in different words or manner to be completely understood.
6. Use their preferred method of communication. Some people to talk on the phone (or telehealth), while others are great with text or email. And many prefer to be face-to-face with their provider.
7. Encourage patients to provide feedback on their healthcare experiences and use this feedback to tailor services and improve care quality.

#2 – Embedding Cultural Awareness

While personalizing care is more about the one-on-one relationship with the patient, embedding cultural awareness is more about operationalizing what you learn from that patient feedback.

With the goal of cultural competence being to provide services that provide the highest quality care to every patient, regardless of cultural background, you’ll invariably need to make some changes in your offerings and the way you approach different groups of people. Some recommendations for areas of change that could be considered more inclusive for people could be:

1. While it would be great if all staff could speak every language, it’s logistically impossible. But you can provide interpreter services for populations you serve, and in many areas there are organizations that can help or funding resources to train or hire interpreters.
2. Recruit and retain minority staff by meeting them where they live and marketing to them on platforms they use. Also make sure your materials highlight people they can relate to.
3. Provide training to increase cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills. Years ago, I worked with a non-profit that did this work and the outcomes were amazing!
4. Look at your clinic locations. Expand into geographic areas that are easily accessible for certain populations, reducing barriers of transportation and helping them to not defer care.
5. Underserved populations may have a harder time getting away from work. They may be part-time or not be able to use PTO to see the doctor during the typical 9-5 that many clinics are open. If they’re crunched for cash, they literally need to choose between seeing a doctor and putting food on the plate. By expanding hours of operation, you can help them work around those limiting factors.
6. While it’s great to be able to speak to a provider in their native tongue, what about when they’re setting an appointment or paying a bill? Provide linguistic competency that extends beyond the clinical encounter to the appointment desk, advice lines, medical billing, and other written materials.

Ultimately, achieving cultural competence in healthcare requires collective effort, unwavering commitment, and a willingness to continually learn and adapt. By embracing diversity, promoting inclusivity, and prioritizing patient-centered care, we can bridge the cultural gap and ensure equitable access to quality healthcare for all. We’ll never be perfect, but together we can strive towards a future where every patient feels understood, respected, and empowered in their healthcare journey.

Lower Prescription Reimbursements may Force Independent Pharmacies to Close

Pharmacies are a critical link in our healthcare system, filling over 6 billion prescriptions last year. But the new CMS guidelines for lower reimbursement may force smaller pharmacies to close, as many of them already have extremely slim margins.

Even the ones who remain open have stated they'd probably have to drop out of Medicare Part D, as 99% of them said their reimbursement dropped since it went into effect.

Read the full article by Healthcare Brew

Prescriptions by the Numbers

1. The most-prescribed drugs in 2023 were: Levothyroxine, Vitamin D, and Amoxicillin ( SingleCare )
2. 20-30% of new prescriptions never get filled by patients ( National Library of Medicine (NLM) )
3. 45.8% of the US population has used a prescription drug in the last 30 days ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention )