KP Fetes Decade of Chinese Access
May 25, 2007
Over a hundred people gathered on May 11 to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Kaiser Permanente San Francisco’s Bilingual Chinese Module.
A primary health care clinic designed to provide high-quality and culturally competent care to members who prefer to receive health services in Asian languages, the Module has 13 bilingual Chinese physicians who are fluent in dialects such as Cantonese Chiuchow, Hakka, Mandarin, Shanghainese and Toishanese. The Module offers health education programs on hypertension, diabetes, cholesterol, foot care and nutrition and also hosts a Chinese Interpreter Call Center, offering interpreting services for members to book appointments, obtain medical advice, or to send messages to their health care provider.
Following a dance performance by members of the Gee Yung International Martial Arts, Dragon and Lion Dance Association, Kaiser Physician-in-Chief Dr. Robert Mithun introduced State Senator Leland Yee.
Yee, who was present at the inauguration of the specialty health care clinic, said that when the unit first opened, it was not immediately well-received. “People would ask, ‘why is it that we need to carve out a unit just for the Chinese?’” he said. Yee, an advocate for improving health care for all Californians, noted that accessibility of services is often times lost within the healthcare profession. “When people say, ‘well they don’t need help, or they don’t need services,’ part of the reason why you may not think that they need help or service is because you don’t make it available to them,” he said. “I think that when you have culturally and linguistically sensitive services, people will in fact come.”
Community leader Francisco Hsieh stopped by the celebration to thank his personal physician, Dr. Anne Tang, Chief of the Chinese Module.
“I’ve been a member with Kaiser about 40 years. People ask me, ‘how do you keep young?’ I said, because Alice Tang takes care of me,” he said. “I am 75 today. I think I am going to give another 20 years to this clinic.”
Tang, who speaks Cantonese, Mandarin and Toishanese, was also present when the clinic first appeared in November of 1996, and noted the Module’s growth in the past decade.
“When we first started in November 1996, we had 8 physicians, 9 medical assistants and 2 advice nurses. Now we have 13 physicians, 7 LI professionals and 14 medical assistants serving our Chinese members,” she said.
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