Providing Language Services to Diverse Populations: Lessons from the Field

Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Office of Minority Health (OMH)

Across the country, health care organizations are using innovative approaches to provide language assistance services to individuals with limited English proficiency. This resource discusses a number of approaches used by these organizations to provide language assistance services to persons with limited English proficiency based on the findings of case studies conducted with a variety of health care organizations.

Guide to Developing a Language Access Plan

Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Office of Minority Health (OMH)

Effective communication is critical to ensuring understanding, empowering patients, and providing high quality care. A language access plan can help ensure that an organization provides high quality and appropriate language services. This guide identifies ways that providers can assess their programs and develop language access plans to ensure persons with limited English proficiency have meaningful access to their programs.

A Practical Guide to Implementing the National CLAS Standards: For Racial, Ethnic and Linguistic Minorities, People with Disabilities and Sexual and Gender Minorities

Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Office of Minority Health (OMH)

The purpose of this toolkit is to enable organizations to implement the National CLAS Standards and improve health equity. It is organized according to the enhanced National CLAS Standards, and provides practical tools and examples of CLAS, in addition to efforts to implement the National CLAS Standards that can be adapted for use by health care organizations. It is intended for organizations that have already decided to pursue CLAS, to improve equity and eliminate health care disparities.

DISPARITIES IMPACT STATEMENT

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Office of Minority Health (OMH)

Learn how to identify, prioritize, and take action on health disparities by championing the Disparities Impact Statement in your organization. Participants receive personalized technical assistance focused on
strengthening your quality improvement program through a series of consultations from subject matter experts.

Core Elements of Human Antibiotic Stewardship Programs in Resource-Limited Settings

Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

This Core Elements is a guide for antibiotic stewardship program implementation in resource-limited settings that have fragile health systems and lack robust, regulatory frameworks. It builds off the Core Elements resources originally created for U.S. healthcare settings to outline structures and functions associated with effective programs. The guide contains practical, high-impact strategies based on both expert opinion as well as experiences in implementing antibiotic stewardship programs at the national and facility-levels to improve antibiotic use and fight antibiotic resistance. The guide provides a range of activities that a government or individual facility can implement based on the resources available.

Implementation of Antibiotic Stewardship Core Elements at Small and Critical Access Hospitals

Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

This document provides guidance on practical strategies to implement antibiotic stewardship programs in small and critical access hospitals. The suggestions provided are based on discussions with staff in small and critical access hospitals, several of which have implemented all of the CDC Core Elements.

Core Elements of Hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Programs

Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

Optimizing the use of antibiotics is critical to effectively treat infections, protect patients from harms caused by unnecessary antibiotic use, and combat antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic stewardship programs can help clinicians improve clinical outcomes and minimize harms by improving antibiotic prescribing. The Core Elements are intended to be an adaptable framework that hospitals can use to guide efforts to improve antibiotic prescribing. The assessment tool that accompanies this document can help hospitals identify gaps to address.

Guidelines for the Prevention of Intravascular Catheter-related Infection (BSI)

Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

These guidelines have been developed for healthcare personnel who insert intravascular catheters and for persons responsible for surveillance and control of infections in hospital, outpatient, and home healthcare settings. The guidelines provide a summary of recommendations to prevent Intravascular Catheter-Related Infections.

Guideline for Prevention of Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTI)

Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

This document is intended for use by infection prevention staff, healthcare epidemiologists, healthcare administrators, nurses, other healthcare providers, and persons responsible for developing, implementing, and evaluating infection prevention and control programs for healthcare settings across the continuum of care. The guideline can also be used as a resource for societies or organizations that wish to develop more detailed implementation guidance for
prevention of CAUTI.