Case Study: Federally Qualified Health Centers

Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC), often seek special designation that will separate them from other community health centers in the area and bridges the gap between clinical care and specialties they provide; Patient centered medical home (PCMH) is the desired federal designation that describes the coordination of care between internal medicine and specialties for the patient population they serve. Such services are rarely culturally sensitive. What deems a culturally sensitive patient centered care are a diverse paradigm within the medical environment; A study completed by Tucker, Marsiske, Rice, Herman & Nielson (2011) demonstrates that paradigms of policies, language, and empowerment are funneled into two coordinated care components:

trust and communication.
The United States Department of Health and Human Services, office of Minority Health (2001), clearly define “culturally sensitive health care … as care that reflects the ability to be appropriately responsive to the attitudes, feelings, or circumstances of groups of people that share a common and distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage” (as cited in Tucker, Marsiske, Rice, Herman & Nielson, 2011, p.343). Culturally sensitive bridges the bigger divide between health access and care coordination. The Joint Commission (2010) emphasize that communication between patient and health care provider is a current pressing issue for the U.S. health care system to reduce racial, ethnic, and language disparities (as cited in, Baxley & Ibitayo, 2015). In addition, trust is an important component and is effective health care provider is expected to show interest in each patient’s priorities (as cited in, Baxley & Ibitayo, 2015).
Tuket, Miru-Paun, and van den Berg et al., (2007) describe patient centered culturally sensitive health care (PC-CSH) as having the following specific characteristics: (a) emphasis on behaviors, attitudes, environmental characteristics and policies as indicators of respect toward patient culture(s); (b) conceptualizes patient-provider relationship as a partnership; and (c) patient empowered (as cited in, Tucker, Marsiske, & Rice et al., 2011)