Healthy demand for Spanish skills

SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE: Nurse Naelia Joa tends to donor Don Groft at the Rhode Island Blood Center. Seventy-eight of the center’s 365 staff members, or 21.4 percent, are Latino. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL PERSSON
SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE: Nurse Naelia Joa tends to donor Don Groft at the Rhode Island Blood Center. Seventy-eight of the center’s 365 staff members, or 21.4 percent, are Latino. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL PERSSON

Fluency in Spanish is in demand in Rhode Island’s health care sector, though training and additional pay are limited, even among some of the state’s top employers in the industry.
Anna Cano Morales, director of the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University, cited data from the Economic Progress Institute showing that of the 138,500 Latinos in Rhode Island, 65 percent participate in the Rhode Island workforce.
“Given the fast-paced growth of Latinos in Rhode Island, mirroring the nation, the need for workers to be bilingual and multicultural is stark, not just in the field of health care, but in the fields of education and business technology,” she said.
Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island expects to hire more Spanish-speaking workers in coming years, and is starting to put professional-development pieces like additional training into place for employees.
“Here, the demand is substantial and growing, and that’s when you have to start building capacity,” said Bobby Rodriguez, vice president and chief diversity officer for Blue Cross. “In the future, we’re going to start Spanish classes as professional development for employees. I have a lot of requests for employees who want to learn Spanish. They would like to greet and connect with members.”
Rodriguez has been at Blue Cross for close to two years. He has worked in comparable positions in the larger Bay State health care system from 2008 to 2012, after working for Blue Cross of Florida from 2006 to 2008.
Rodriguez commissioned a study for Blue Cross from San Francisco-based Added Value Cheskin, a marketing-analysis firm, which delivered a report in early 2013 on demographics. Rodriguez said he found that people of color will be almost 28 percent of Rhode Island’s population by 2020, while Hispanics, who make up 14 percent of the population today, are projected to reach 16 percent by 2020, he said.
In other states, like New Mexico, Arizona and California, more than 50 percent of the babies born today are Hispanic, he said. With 850 employees, about 40 workers at Blue Cross have Spanish-language skills at varying levels of proficiency, Rodriguez said, though none are paid extra for the skill.
“We are moving to the next level,” he said. “We’re continuing to look as we have in the last three months for more people with bilingual skills.”
In Florida, Blue Cross’ pay scale has been upgraded to 7 percent for people who are fully bilingual, so Rodriguez would like eventually to increase salaries here, too, and is planning to do so as demand warrants. However, 15 of the 100 employees in customer service are fully bilingual, and of those, four are in the new Blue Cross retail store in Warwick, he said.
“We started training to fill that gap, and I am going to need more” of these skilled employees, he said.
Despite a lack of specified compensation to go along with help in on-the-job interpreting or translating for patients, at least one health network – Care New England – relies on the Community College of Rhode Island’s certification program to prepare workers to be interpreters. Hispanic workers also may simply bring native fluency to bear on their jobs.
“English is the language of medicine,” said Michael Peruta, director of workforce development for the Care New England health care system, “so everyone really has to have very strong English skills.
“Within the system we have hundreds of different-licensed professionals, so that one language is the base language for communication across disciplines. That’s part of the challenge, because many of the patients don’t have strong English skills or we [as health professionals] don’t have strong Spanish skills,” he said.
Care New England includes Kent Hospital, Butler Hospital and Women & Infants Hospital, the Care New England VNA and recently added the Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island.
Even though English is the primary language at Care New England, Peruta acknowledged that professionals who speak Spanish are in demand. “Just because English is the language of medicine, it may not be what our patients are speaking,” he said. “What we really focus on is assuring that when we’re translating medical information, it’s very clear and specific. We have special training courses. We have certified medical interpreters [that] do certifications and training. CCRI is really a fantastic resource. That certification – we trust and we use it.”
At the Rhode Island Blood Center, 78 of about 365 staff members, or 21.4 percent, are Latino, said Human Resources Manager Mary Lou Bynum in an email.
The center has “no specific outreach to the Latino community because there are sufficient applicants to satisfy any needs,” she said. “However, we do some information education programs at schools that may have a particularly high Latino or minority population to educate students on the particular job opportunities at the Rhode Island Blood Center.”
Frank Prosnitz, the center’s communication manager, said the center provides a lot of opportunity for people from a number of different ethnicities “because we try to mirror who we serve, which is a very diverse population.”
Workers who speak Spanish fluently “bring a skill that’s very important to an organization like ours,” Prosnitz said. “It’s not only about being able to speak [the client’s] language; it’s about making them feeling comfortable about donating blood.”
Like Care New England, Lifespan, a five-partner nonprofit health care system based in Providence, relies on interpreters, but considers Spanish, as well as Portuguese and Cape Verdean to be very much in demand, said Nancy McMahon. McMahon is a vice president for human resources at The Miriam Hospital in Providence and responsible for diversity in the Lifespan system.
“Interpreters have the primary job of being available when we can’t communicate with the patient or know we need to communicate sensitive medical information,” McMahon said. “And they’re certified. There’s a certain competency and standard that we can rely on with the interpreters.” Lifespan does not compensate specifically for an employee who is bilingual in positions other than interpreters, and that is unlikely to change in the near future, McMahon said. But speaking a second language is a definite asset, she added.
“As the population in the state changes and there’s more diversity, if someone were to [apply for] a position in patient registration, an entry-level position, if that person came in speaking another language, that would be an advantage and one of the considerations in hiring them,” McMahon said.
Peruta, Prosnitz and Rodriguez agree there is a long way to go before professional development for Spanish-language speakers is offered broadly in Rhode Island.
Of approximately 18,000 registered nurses in the state, Peruta said, probably fewer than 200 speak Spanish fluently, and that same low ratio would apply to doctors as well.
“Wouldn’t it be nice [to have] the physician who has the medical knowledge and thinking in English, but is speaking clearly in Spanish to the patient?” he said. “That would be ideal. But for now, the reality is, there are very few people like that, so we use talented medical interpreters.”
However, Peruta and Rodriguez say there is some indication that as the Affordable Care Act moves patients outside of the traditional acute-care hospital setting toward in-home care and community clinics, there is likely to be more demand for Spanish and other languages as a critical skill.
“We’re paying attention,” said Peruta, “but how many and what number? It won’t be known until we see how the health care model gets established in Rhode Island and New England.”
At Blue Cross, Rodriguez sees the need growing in nursing, sales and marketing, so the organization will be gradually adding bilingual workers in Spanish and in other languages.
“I prefer to add incrementally,” he said. “We just need to continue building within the organization. It’s happening now.” •

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