CareMessage is updating our product to allow for an easy customer experience in communicating with patients in their preferred languages!

We know you serve a diverse population, and need a messaging solution that can facilitate the delivery of accurate information in the language that is preferred by patients. Twenty-five percent of FQHC patients nationally are best served in a language other than English. That translates to over seven million people!

People with limited English proficiency are less likely to have a regular health care provider, have fewer physician visits, and have lower rates of screening (e.g., blood pressure, cancer). Language barriers can adversely affect healthcare outcomes. This includes increased hospitalization rates, longer stays, and higher mortality rates. As a mission-driven organization focused on health equity, we want our solution to address this need.

Here are all the details! Please feel free to contact your Customer Success Manager or our Support team if you have any questions.

Starting in summer 2023, CareMessage users can now use our interface to send Outreach messages in languages other than English and Spanish. Users will supply their own translated messaging content. A convenient search bar is available to select languages and display those language windows within the interface, alongside English and Spanish.

It also means that when a patient's preferred language is one of our supported languages, they will receive system messages in their patient-preferred language.

This allows for consistency of the user experience and ensures that we are facilitating important communication to users in their preferred language.

Here is the list of languages that will be included as options in the CareMessage Outreach interface as of June 2023, and that will have translated system messages that will be sent to patients who have those languages as patient-preferred language in their profile.

The list of languages we plan to support will grow throughout the year. It is currently approximately 60, but will be more as time goes on! This is why we want to encourage you to document patient-preferred language data in your EHR. Even if a language is not included this summer, it may be in the future!

Existing customers need a Staff Supervisor to enable Language Support within the CareMessage app. This can be done within “Settings”, as shown below. You can use the dropdown menu to select languages that will be added to your interface within the Outreach functionality in the CareMessage app:

Once languages have been added by the Staff Supervisor, they will be available within the Outreach template view to be added as individual message inputs, which is where the Outreach content can be populated:

Here's a video of our Product Designer, Eric Ruelas, walking you through the functionality!

In addition to adding the languages within the CareMessage app interface, we request that you help us by ensuring that your organization has a solid data strategy regarding languages.

If you have an EMR integration with CareMessage, it will be helpful for you to maintain accurate language preference data in the EMR. This will ensure that patients receive messages in their preferred languages. Data on patient-preferred languages will help us to determine which additional languages should be supported in the future.

If you do not have an integration with CareMessage, you may need to update patient information within the CareMessage app to ensure data accuracy. Your Customer Success Manager or Support team can help you with this, if you have any questions.

Once a language has been added to your account, you can not remove it. If this poses an issue for your organization, please contact our Support team.

System messages to be translated include:

It’s important to note that, for now, patients will only receive system messages related to Outreach in their preferred language.

For example: If a patient has Polish noted as their preferred language in the patient profile, they'll get all Outreach system messages in Polish, but any appointment-related system messages will be in English. This is totally intentional! It's part of our effort to ensure patients have a consistent message experience. As language support is rolled out for other features, the system messages related to those features will reflect patient-preferred languages.

Before you enable languages in settings, we recommend you think about what content you want to send to patients in what languages, and who within your organization (or outside of it) will be responsible for translating content and ensuring accuracy. You should have a plan for what you want to communicate to patients, in which languages, before you enable language functionality.

As soon as you add the new language in your settings, you can add translated content to your templates in Outreach. If you need help with this, our Customer Success and Support teams are here for you!

Right now, we’re supporting (allowing for selection from the Outreach interface, and providing translated system messages for) approximately 60 languages.

Our main focus is on the languages most commonly used by our customers. We will be adding new languages as time goes on. Watch your monthly newsletter from CareMessage for more information on this!

Functionality for translating outgoing messages is very complex, and we are still working it out. Part of creating a patient-centered experience with language support is making sure that the quality of language translation is high. We don’t want to release a solution that is not optimal.

Right now, you can help us by letting us know what you need. Please communicate with your Customer Success Manager or our Support team if you have requests for translation of outbound messages (language and messages to be translated), so that we can start documenting customer needs.

For the June 2023 release, we will be able to translate incoming messages for almost all of the Supported Languages (currently all but four of approximately 60 Supported Languages). In practice, this is what that will look like:

For the four languages for which inbound translation is not supported- Chuukese, Karen Languages, Lao, and Marshallese- the messaging flow is as follows:

Our approach to inbound language translation is that we want the patient to be able to communicate in their preferred language, so we are supporting inbound patient responses in patient-preferred language to the greatest extent possible. We will continue to make progress in this in subsequent releases.

You can just remove that language input window! You don’t have to send a message in all languages, just whichever ones you want.

We plan to launch Language Support for Appointments and Messenger before the end of 2023.

No restrictions exist on the number of languages that can be included in a single Outreach. English does not have to be included in the languages for any Outreach.

Our objective is to maintain communication in a single, patient-preferred language within a patient's message thread related to Outreach. As we add Language Support for additional features, this will be the case for those other features. We view this as the most patient-friendly and patient-centric solution, and this is one of the reasons we are limiting the number of languages for the June release.