Healdsburg District Hospital (HDH) received a rare 3 year major expansion grant to expand its medical interpreter services to the community. The purpose of the Ayudante Medical Services is to enhance healthcare at our hospital to include the communities surrounding the hospital, which encompasses the cities of Cloverdale, Geyserville and Windsor, as well as the rural communities of Northern Sonoma County. The word Ayudante literally means; “Helper” in Spanish.

The Ayudante Medical Interpreter Services is an out-reach program with an emphasis the Limited English Proficiency (LEP) patients. According to the 2000 US Census Bureau our primary service area encompasses 60,000 residents, and of the 60,000 residents 27% clamed to be of Hispanic origin.

The Ayudante Services was designed by a coalition of local healthcare professionals, farm workers and hospital management and clinical staff. The Ayudante Medical Interpreter Services seeks to improve access to existing vital healthcare resources by providing fluent and proficient interpretation services in both English / Spanish for our patients, staff and our providers.

Currently we have sixteen (16) trained medical interpreters. Of the 16, three (3) are full time medical interpreters and thirteen (13) are HDH employee’s who have been cross-trained as medical Interpreters, these 15 interpreters along with CyraCom augment the services.

For more information, please call (707) 431-6465 or (707) 431-6464, or email Mario Guzman at mguzman@nschd.org

Addressing Linguistic and Cultural Diversity