Sec. 203. Ensuring standards for culturally and linguistically appropriate services in health care
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This section shall apply to any health program or activity, any part of which is receiving Federal financial assistance, including credits, subsidies, or contracts of insurance, or any program or activity that is administered by an executive agency or any entity established under title I of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ( 42 U.S.C. 18001 et seq.) (or amendments made thereby). Each program or activity described in subsection (a)— shall implement strategies to recruit, retain, and promote individuals at all levels to maintain a diverse staff and leadership that can provide culturally and linguistically appropriate health care to patient populations of the service area of the program or activity; shall educate and train governance, leadership, and workforce at all levels and across all disciplines of the program or activity in culturally and linguistically appropriate policies and practices on an ongoing basis at least yearly; shall offer and provide language assistance, including trained and competent bilingual staff and interpreter services, to individuals with limited English proficiency or who have other communication needs, at no cost to the individual at all points of contact, and during all hours of operation, to facilitate timely access to health care services and health-care-related services; shall for each language group consisting of individuals with limited English proficiency that constitutes 5 percent or 500 individuals, whichever is less, of the population of persons eligible to be served or likely to be affected or encountered in the service area of the program or activity, make available at a fifth grade reading level— easily understood patient-related materials, including print and multimedia materials, in the language of such language group; information or notices about termination of benefits in such language; signage; and any other documents or types of documents designated by the Secretary; shall develop and implement clear goals, policies, operational plans, and management, accountability, and oversight mechanisms to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services and infuse them throughout the planning and operations of the program or activity; shall conduct initial and ongoing organizational assessments of culturally and linguistically appropriate services-related activities and integrate valid linguistic, competence-related National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services
(CLAS)measures into the internal audits, performance improvement programs, patient satisfaction assessments, continuous quality improvement activities, and outcomes-based evaluations of the program or activity and develop ways to standardize the assessments, and such assessments must occur at least yearly; shall ensure that, consistent with the privacy protections provided for under the regulations promulgated under section 264(c) of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ( 42 U.S.C. 1320–2 note), data on an individual required to be collected pursuant to section 3101, including the individual’s alternative format preferences and policy modification needs, are— collected in health records; integrated into the management information systems of the program or activity; and periodically updated; shall maintain a current demographic, cultural, and epidemiological profile of the community, conduct regular assessments of community health assets and needs, and use the results of such assessments to accurately plan for and implement services that respond to the cultural and linguistic characteristics of the service area of the program or activity; shall develop participatory, collaborative partnerships with communities and utilize a variety of formal and informal mechanisms to facilitate community and patient involvement in designing, implementing, and evaluating policies and practices to ensure culturally and linguistically appropriate service-related activities; shall ensure that conflict and grievance resolution processes are culturally and linguistically appropriate and capable of identifying, preventing, and resolving cross-cultural conflicts or complaints by patients; shall regularly make available to the public information about their progress and successful innovations in implementing the standards under this section and provide public notice in their communities about the availability of this information; and shall, if requested, regularly make available to the head of each Federal entity from which Federal funds are provided, information about the progress and successful innovations of the program or activity in implementing the standards under this section as required by the head of such entity. An agency carrying out a program described in subsection
(a)shall ensure that comments with respect to such program that are accepted through notice and comment rulemaking be accepted in all languages, may not require such comments to be submitted only in English, and must ensure these comments are considered equally as comments submitted in English during the agency’s review of comments submitted.
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- 42 USC 1320–2
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Sec. 203
Ensuring standards for culturally and linguistically appropriate services in health care
Cite42 USC 1320–2
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