(1045) Impact of Language Interpretation Services on Vaccination Rates in Patients with Limited English Proficiency (LEP)

Objectives: 1. To increase pharmacy team awareness of linguistic barriers and promote personalized healthcare interventions for patients.
a. Tally and compare the number of times the telephone-based language interpretation services are used year over year both in the entire pharmacy division and six specific observation sites between October 1st to December 31st.
b. Calculate change in number of patient profiles consisting of Spanish selected as the “preferred” language at all pharmacies during the testing period.
2. To measure patient inclination to receive vaccinations after communicating with pharmacy staff in their preferred language.
a. Count the number of vaccinations administered when using language interpretation services to make strong, vaccine recommendations directly to patients.
b. Compare these vaccinations provided to patients with LEP to the total vaccination count.

Methods: Prior to the start of the testing period, the PGY-1 community pharmacy resident will create a presentation consisting of current best practice expectations and available tools for pharmacy teams when communicating with patients with LEP. The presentation shall include directions and expectations as to how to use the company-wide, telephone language interpretation service. Furthermore, guidance to make strong recommendations for vaccinations in eligible patients in their preferred language will be provided.
Chain pharmacies under the same company will be evaluated for staff multilingualism, patient demographics, and presence of Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs). Six of the evaluated pharmacies will be selected as the designated observational test sites for the duration of the study in which the resident will lead the patient-language education training to the pharmacy leaders including the pharmacy manager and lead technician.
For three months, pharmacy teams at the six observation sites will be asked to document every immunization provided resulting from deliberate, strong, recommendations to patients made with the language interpretation service in their preferred language. Following the testing period, data will be pulled from the specified observational testing sites, as well as every other pharmacy under the same banner. Specifically, researchers will collect data on the total immunizations provided, total prescription count, total calls to the language interpretation service, the amount of patient’s whose “primary language” has been changed to Spanish in the pharmacy information system, and the number of patients enrolled in text message notifications. Using this data, researchers may make an assessment as to what impact in total vaccinations provided can be attributed to having direct, patient-focused conversations to patients with LEP.

Results: N/A - In Progress Resident Research

Conclusions: N/A - In Progress Resident Research