iCommunicator Helps Facilitate Communications with Deaf Patients at Maryland's Upper Chesapeake Health Facilities

Upper Chesapeake Health, a health care system serving communities in northeast Maryland, is out to create the "healthiest community in Maryland" through services to its patients over a lifetime. So, when team members discover an opportunity to improve service—they get right to work. That was the case when they found that their communications with deaf patients seeking emergency services could be improved. A thorough and comprehensive research process brought them to a solution: iCommunicator communication access technology.

Upper Chesapeake Health receives over 75,000 emergency room patient visits a year at its two hospitals serving communities in northeast Maryland. For patients who are deaf or hard-of hearing, a sign language interpreter is provided when needed. But, these service providers are not always quickly available in emergency situations. "From the time a deaf or hard-of-hearing individual hits the door at an Upper Chesapeake Health facility to the time that we're able to provide a qualified sign language interpreter can be from 20 minutes to 2 hours," explains Marty Knutson, Upper Chesapeake Health General Counsel and Compliance Officer. "We're in the suburbs here and there are only so many qualified interpreters that live in the county, so, quite often, they must come from Baltimore. In the case of a seriously ill patient that can be a very critical period. We recognized this as a service gap and knew we had to figure out how to close it," she says.

Better Communications Tool Required

To communicate with deaf individuals, the nursing and admissions staff had tried various other methods. "For example," explains Knutson, "we used cards where the deaf person could point to letters to spell out words, and a computer to convert hospital personnel's questions to text, so that patients could read and respond to it. But these methods did not produce clear communication that was comfortable for the patient. So we decided to look for alternatives," Knutson says.

Computing systems administrator, Eric McNulty, took on the task of looking for assistive technology solutions. "Initially, we were just looking for better speech recognition technology—that's what we thought would be the solution," he says. McNulty's search brought him, instead, to iCommunicator. The iCommunicator efficiently converts in real-time: speech to text, speech to video sign language, speech to computer-generated voice, and text to computer-generated voice or video sign language. It appeared to be a good possibility, but Knutson says they needed to know how effective it would be with those who used it—so they decided to put it to the test.

Evaluation Included Tests with Volunteers from Deaf Community

"Our organization's goal is to create a healing and compassionate environment here at Upper Chesapeake Health—and an important element of that is accurate and complete communication about people's issues and problems," says Knutson. So, the health system cultivates close contacts with many community groups—including the deaf community. "We decided they could help us decide if iCommunicator was really the solution." Knutson and McNulty set up an evaluation process that involved members of the deaf community and hospital personnel in role-playing situations. They tested real-world scenarios of ill or injured patients who are deaf being handled through the hospital emergency triage process. The tests were rigorous and also involved participation by iCommunicator experts at 1450, Inc., a distributor of the product.

Ongoing Training Keeps Technology Relevant

In the end, both deaf community testers and Upper Chesapeake Health nurses and staff who used the product were pleased. "We decided to invest in the technology and the training to make this solution work," says Knutson. Each of the system's hospitals now has an iCommunicator available, and nurses and staff members are trained to use it. Initially, a group designated as super-users were trained, and later they trained others. To ensure that Upper Chesapeake Health nurses and staff stay up-to-date on operation of the iCommunicator, it is being added to their core competencies—a set of professional specifications on which they are tested each year. "Such testing is not just with assistive technology," says Knutson, "but any technology—anything from the cardiac monitor to the iCommunicator."

"We're in a service industry here," says Knutson. "Patient satisfaction is crucial. And one of the primary drivers of patient satisfaction is whether or not our patients feel they are being treated with dignity and respect. And good communication is a big piece of that. To the extent that this type of technology improves our communication, it also improves our ability to treat our patients and provide them with the dignity and respect they deserve. People come back to a place where they are treated well. In our experience, assistive technology makes very good business sense."