How Corewell Health Is Building a Unified Model for Language Access

Fast Facts

• 21 hospitals and 3,000+ outpatient locations across Michigan

• 65,000+ team members, including 12,000+ physicians and advanced practice providers and 16,000+ nurses

• Priority Health, Corewell Health’s provider-sponsored health plan, serves 1.3 million+ members statewide

• Recognized among America’s Greatest Workplaces for Inclusion & Diversity 2025  

Click here to watch the Corewell Health webinar recording.

At Equiti’s Fall 2025 Language Access Leadership Webinar Series, Suzette Proctor, Senior Director, Patient Flow and Capacity Management for Corewell Health and CHW Language Services, and Vahida Kajtazovic, Language Services Manager, shared how Corewell Health is approaching language access alignment as part of the broader integration.

A Health System in Transition

Mergers test everything: workflows, culture, and communication.

For Proctor and Kajtazovic, language access sits at the center of that change.

“Language services are part of the heart of health equity,” said Proctor. “As we integrate three systems into one, we’re ensuring that every patient, no matter their language, has access, understanding, and clarity of care.”

Across Corewell Health’s regions, language access looked different prior to the merger.  

Some hospitals had established in-house interpreter teams, while others leaned on vendor support; some relied more on face-to-face interpreting, and others leaned on remote interpreting. These differences reflected regional needs, patient populations, and existing operational models.

“Each region operates somewhat differently,” Kajtazovic explained. “Our goal is to bring all of that experience and expertise together, to share the wealth of knowledge we’ve built over decades and unify how we serve patients.”

To support this work, the team began by mapping existing language access models and identifying opportunities to align shared policies.

Building a Framework for Consistency

Kajtazovic’s team now supports more than 14,000 phone and video encounters each month, serving six primary spoken languages and American Sign Language.

“Every number we track represents a patient – a person who deserves to understand their care,” she said. “We do this work with passion because it’s about people, not processes.”

To support greater consistency across the system, Corewell Health is aligning vendors and bilingual-staff testing while continuing to develop shared language access policies that support safe, effective care across diverse environments.  

Proctor summed it up simply:

“When you bring multiple organizations together, you have to define who you are as one,” she said. “That includes how you speak to your patients and how you ensure they understand you.”

Shared Visibility Across the System

With centralized invoicing and translation costs allocated through a single cost center, leadership has clearer visibility into utilization across regions. This reporting helps leadership better understand language access use across the system and make informed strategic decisions.  

“Language access supports quality, safety, and experience all at once,” said Proctor. “That’s why it belongs at the table when we talk about patient flow and operations.”  

“Interpreter services aren’t a nice-to-have. They’re a core part of operational excellence and patient safety.”

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The Takeaway

Corewell Health’s experience illustrates what it takes to align language access during periods of transformation.

The organization is focusing on shared policy frameworks, clearer visibility through a shared cost center, and a patient-first approach, while recognizing that regions may meet language access needs in different ways.

For health system leaders, three lessons stand out:

• Align early: Establish shared expectations for language access as systems come together. Early alignment helps reduce fragmentation while allowing for differences across care settings.

• Use visibility to inform decisions: Utilization reporting helps leaders better understand how language access supports safety and patient experience across different care environments.

• Keep people at the center: Language access decisions are guided by patient understanding and real-world care needs, not just scale or efficiency.

Corewell Health set out to bring three regions together under a shared commitment to equitable, connected care. In doing so, it has shown how language access can serve as a foundation for quality, safety, and patient trust.

That’s how equitable care becomes standard care.