Manhattan Cross Cultural Group and Cook Ross Align to Deliver Comprehensive Cultural Competency Solutions in Healthcare

In a unique partnership committed to improving healthcare, the Manhattan Cross Cultural Group, Inc. founded by three of the nation’s leaders in health disparities, cross-cultural healthcare and cultural competency, Drs. Joe Betancourt, Emilio Carrillo, and Alex Green and Cook Ross, Inc. a national leader in diversity and cultural competency training and consulting for almost 20 years have joined forces to offer the most comprehensive solution for healthcare cultural competency training and consulting in the country.

Silver Spring, MD (PRWeb) February 6, 2007 -- Comprehensive cultural competency solutions for healthcare is a goal for many organizations today. Recognizing this need, a strategic partnership has been formed between Cook Ross, Inc., and Manhattan Cross Cultural Group, Inc. (MCCG), both national leaders in cultural competency training and consulting services. MCCG, founded by three physicians who are among the nation’s thought leaders in cross-cultural healthcare and health disparities (cultural

competency products and services for the healthcare industry. Among their products is their on-line healthcare resource CultureVision™, which allows practitioners to rapidly access culture-specific patient care information. This partnership will allow organizations to work with MCCG and Cook Ross in every aspect of their cultural competency efforts. Such activities include online or on-site cross-cultural training, organizational assessments, as well as valuable cross-cultural reference materials.

“We are very excited about our partnership with MCCG,” said Cook Ross president, Howard Ross. They are committed to change and making a difference and that is what has been at the heart of our business for the past 17 years. I believe that the solutions that we bring as a team are second to none and I look forward to sharing them with more people and seeing the difference that they make for years to come.” Among the many solutions that MCCG and Cook Ross will offer are their respective web-based products Quality Interactions® http://www.qualityinteractions.org and CultureVision™ http://www.crculturevision.com. Quality Interactions® is an innovative e-learning program that provides cultural competency training for physicians, nurses, and non-clinical healthcare professionals. CultureVision™ is a comprehensive web-based tool for healthcare professionals to gain on-the-spot access to culturally competent patient

care information.

“This partnership brings together two bodies of very complimentary products and services,” said Dr. Joe Betancourt (http://www.qualityinteractions.org/about_us/mccg_founders.html), President of Manhattan Cross Cultural Group. “Our work at MCCG has been committed to the elimination of health disparities and we created Quality Interactions® to meet that need for individuals and organizations. Working with Cook Ross and offering CultureVision™ (http://www.crculturevision.com/) as a complement to our training programs will enable healthcare professionals to participate in a comprehensive approach to cultural competence.”

Along with their respective web-based tools, Cook Ross and MCCG will provide a wide array of training and consulting solutions, web seminars (http://www.cookross.com/events.asp), web casts, and workshops. Information about upcoming events (free and fee-based) can be found at their websites Cook Ross at http://www.cookross.com and MCCG at http://www.qualityinteractions.org.

Finding comprehensive solutions to address cultural competency including understanding and meeting CLAS standards, formulating plans to address JCAHO’s review, and consistently educating clinicians and staff can be challenging. The MCCG-Cook Ross partnership can help remove the guess work and provide answers that have proven results, guaranteed.

About Manhattan Cross Cultural Group

MCCG was founded by Drs. Joseph Betancourt, Alexander Green, and Emilio Carrillo – three physician thought-leaders in the field of cross-cultural healthcare. They developed an innovative e-learning program that provides [cultural competency training called Quality Interactions® that highlights the key elements of their nationally recognized, cross-cultural curriculum published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (Cross-Cultural Primary Care: A Patient-Based Approach. Ann Intern Med. 1999;130:829-834). The program can be completed at home or at work, at the learner’s own pace, and is accredited for 2.5 hours of CME/CEU.

The Institute of Medicine has cited cultural competency training as one approach to addressing health disparities from the clinical perspective. Quality Interactions® allows physicians, nurses and healthcare professionals to interact with patients to assess several real cases from a cross-cultural viewpoint and provides real-time performance feedback as the learner moves through the course. Quality Interactions® also provides a strong framework for administering good patient-centered care to patients of all backgrounds and makes the legal, business and medical case for implementing culturally competent care. A new version of Quality Interactions is now available for employees who work in the health care field but are do not provide clinical care, such as office staff, administrative personnel and many others.

About Cook Ross

Cook Ross is one of the country's leading organizational change and diversity consultancies. Based in Silver Spring, Md., for nearly 20 years, the company has provided cultural competency solutions through its training, consulting products and services. Cook Ross believes that cultural competency can be learned and developed and can lead to unprecedented growth and vastly improved productivity, morale, internal communication, leadership, and customer satisfaction. Cook Ross has developed CultureVision (http://www.crculturevision.com), an online diversity tool for healthcare providers and The Diversity Toolkit (http://www.thediversitytoolkit.com) for learning diversity and cultural competency in all settings. In helping organizations develop cultural competence, the company empowers employees with a set of new skills, enabling them to more effectively relate to customers and each other.

Since 1996, Cook Ross has been growing its capacity in the area of cultural competency in healthcare. This growth, combined with many years of experience of delivering consulting and training has led the firm to a systematic approach to cultural competency that focuses on organizational change. Experientially, the historical approach to teaching people about diversity and cultural awareness leaned towards finding fault and fixing all “the bad people”. While we agree that there are behaviors that are unacceptable and cannot be tolerated, our approach starts from the assumption that people want to do what is best for business, including behaving in a respectable manner. We create solutions that help organizations leverage both the top line (people) and the bottom line (profit) that translates into optimal performance, great customer service, and overall organizational excellence.

This press release was distributed through eMediawire by Human Resources Marketer (HR Marketer: www.HRmarketer.com) on behalf of the company listed above.

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