VIA Helps Facilitate Implementation of PPACA Requirements for Healthcare Organizations

By United Language Group

VIA, leading provider of global healthcare translation and localization services, is helping health plans and insurance issuers comply with the new interim final regulations (IFR) under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). New rules under IFR require plans to provide notices to enrollees in a “culturally and linguistically appropriate manner.” Additionally, healthcare organizations are required to meet the PPACA’s full enforcement deadline of July 02, 2011.

“Healthcare organizations today are faced with numerous challenges in providing language access services: compliance issues, increasing diversity, multiple languages, dwindling budgets, costs of hiring bilingual staff and other time-consuming matters,” says Steve Vogeltanz, VP of Healthcare. “VIA’s goal is to reduce language barriers in healthcare by helping organizations cost-effectively reach language access goals in a streamlined fashion.”

According to the National Health Law Program (NHeLP), a public interest law firm working to advance access to quality healthcare and protect the legal rights of low-income and underserved people, “There are a number of provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) that offer opportunities to specify that language services must be provided or require the provision of certain information in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner. So what does this mean in practice? A lot is left to the Administration to determine as part of ACA implementation. But that offers many opportunities to influence implementation and improve language services.”

Low-income Americans, racial and ethnic minorities, and other underserved populations often have higher rates of disease, fewer treatment options, and reduced access to care. They are also less likely to have health insurance than the population as a whole. By improving access to quality health care for all Americans, the Affordable Care Act will help reduce these health disparities. Vogeltanz says, “VIA focuses on improving access to healthcare and helps organizations save money with online translation and localization, expert linguists and providing healthcare and compliance expertise.”

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