Imagine. Your child has suffered a massive head injury and is rushed by ambulance to the nearest hospital. You race into the emergency room, and find that no one there speaks your language. You cannot understand the doctors, and they cannot understand you.

A recent federal grant awarded to Metropolitan Hospital will ensure that resettled refugees in Grand Rapids will not face this terrifying scenario. Using video conferencing with hospital-trained off-site interpreters, the program will allow effective communication between health providers and patients at low cost to the hospitals.

William Cunningham, DO, MHA, senior vice president and chief medical officer, will serve as the principal investigator on the project. The grant proposal was written by Sheila Rettig, a former nurse and current grant administrator at Metropolitan Hospital, and Colleen Kniffen, assistant to the dean at MSUCOM. Mark Notman, PhD, of the college's Medical Informatics Office, provided technical support to the effort, while Martin Furey, MA, of the college Office for Research, provided editorial support. The grant is funded through the U. S. Department of Commerce's Technology Opportunities Program and will support approximately half of the almost- $1.5 million, three-year project. Only 3% of proposals submitted were funded nationwide.

Federal law mandates that refugees must have access to health care, necessitating a translator, but federal funding does not reimburse hospitals for translation services - a situation that Ms. Rettig calls "draining to hospital systems." In addition, there are no standards for the skill of the interpreter, she said, and no standards for compensation. Some people charge a $20 flat fee, others $150 per hour. The project will initially focus on providing interpreters for Vietnamese, Spanish and Serbo-Croation languages.

During the first year, Metropolitan Hospital will set up a videoconference center with three translators, one for each language. In year two, the hospital will hire and train three additional interpreters to facilitate the addition of partnering hospitals and health care agencies that will link to the interpreters via videoconference technology. Partners that have committed to participate in the project include MSUCOM, Spectrum Health, St. Mary's Hospital, Kent County Health Department, Catholic Human Development Outreach, and Pine Rest Mental Health Services.