DEARBORN – For Mohamad “Moe” Rustom, the language barrier isn’t just about difficulty in communication, it’s about safety.

Rustom with award.

Rustom, RN, BSN, is the director of Clinical Language Services for the Oakwood Healthcare System (OHS). His work with people of various ethnic backgrounds—and improving the communication between them and their health care providers—has earned him the 2010 Diversity Business Leader Award from Corp! Magazine.

“It is an honor to be recognized,” said Rustom, who has been a nurse for 20 years and worked with OHS for the past eight.

Rustom, a Dearborn Heights resident, said he saw many instances where language barriers were impacting patient care as an emergency and trauma nurse dating back to 1991. Often patients were returning to the emergency room for follow-up care or discharge instructions.

“People were coming back because they didn’t understand what they were supposed to do or how to take their medications,” said Rustom. “Patient safety was a real concern.”

In a county as populous as Wayne County, home to people of countless ethnic backgrounds, national origins, cultures and religions—and socio-economic status—the need for interpretive/translation services was growing all the time. With a $250,000 grant from the Masco Corporation, Oakwood started the Interpretive and Translation Services (ITS) program in 2003 and named Rustom the manager of it in 2005. He developed the program into a nationally recognized language access program that is still known as a model of innovation today. It is one of only two programs in southeast Michigan regarded as an industry leader in redressing healthcare disparities through the elimination of language barriers and access to consistent and high-quality care.

“Healing, wellness and safety depend on the patient’s right to knowledge, comfort and control,” said Rustom. “The cornerstone of these is effective communication.”

The program provides Spanish and Arabic interpreters onsite at all inpatient and emergency facilities, on-site translators to explain patient care documents, along with three-way interpreter telephones for live patient-provider interpretation in more than 140 languages, which is available 24 hours a day.

It also features Michigan’s first web-based ITS library with more than 100 patient information documents including discharge instructions, explanations of illnesses and procedures and patient rights. There are multi-language welcome and directional signs throughout the patient and visitor areas too.

Rustom also serves on the OHS Patient Rights Committee, Clinical Ethics Committee, Diversity Council and the Greater Detroit Area Health Council (GDAHC). He was instrumental in obtaining a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Aligning Forces for Language Quality Improvement grant to Oakwood Hospital and Medical Center (OHMC), making it one of nine in the country to serve as a learning laboratory to help improve safety for patients with limited English proficiency.

For Rustom, though, it’s all just part of the job.

“It’s doing the right thing,” he said. “We have a diverse patient population that deserves the best in care. We have to respond to the needs of the community.”