Quality Interactions® Announces Launch of New Cultural Competency Resource Center Website

Boston, MA (Manhattan Cross Cultural Group, Inc) – January 21, 2009;

Manhattan Cross Cultural Group, founded by three physician thought-leaders in the field of cross-cultural care - Drs. Joseph Betancourt, Alex Green and J. Emilio Carrillo and creators of the Quality Interactions® training programs have launched a new Cultural Competency Resource Center Website to help physicians, nurses and healthcare professionals have access to vitally important information that will help them better communicate and care for patients of diverse cultural backgrounds. Within the website a section on difficult patient scenarios is included - such as how to explore why a patient may be non-adherent to medications or mistrustful of a surgical procedure. In addition, the site also includes important information on language and interpretation, cross-cultural communication skills, and health beliefs of different cultures and religions.

Why Does It Matter: Two Institute of Medicine Reports—Crossing the Quality Chasm and Unequal Treatment—have highlighted "patient-centered care" and "cultural competence" as fundamental pillars of high quality health care. Cross-cultural care, which combines these concepts, has emerged because of several major factors including oversight and accrediting organizations beginning to regulate cultural competency training, including the National Committee on Quality Assurance, the Joint Commission, the American Nurses Credentialing Center, and the National Quality Forum - all of which have made cultural competency quality measures and training for physicians, nurses and medical students a significant component of their work.

Quality Interactions® is a series of training programs designed for all healthcare professionals that is centered on the idea that the patient is your best source of information about their own cultural perspective. Now healthcare organizations can access all the necessary tools needed to create a culturally competent organization through the Quality Interactions® Approach from live training to e-learning to the Cultural Competency Resource Center.

The Quality Interactions® Approach has been used to train over 20,000 physicians, nurses and healthcare staff to date in the United States and allows organizations to capture important evaluation data to help measure staff response to the training and how it will impact patient care. "The Cultural Competency Resource Center is a culmination of all of our work and we are hopeful it will be a tremendous asset for healthcare organizations as they look forward to providing the best care for their patients," says Joseph Betancourt, MD, MPH; co-founder of Manhattan Cross Cultural Group.

To learn more about how to implement the Quality Interactions® Approach at your healthcare organization, please contact Tessa Misiaszek at tmisiaszek@qualityinteractions.org or visit www.qualityinteractions.org.

MCCG Contact
Tessa G. Misiaszek, MPH
Chief Operating Officer
Manhattan Cross Cultural Group
PO Box 273
Marshfield Hills, MA 02051
978-807-1058
tmisiaszek@qualityinteractions.org