VITAS Healthcare Case Study

Providing Translations with Nuance, Empathy and Compassion

Website

vitas.com

Industry

Healthcare

Type

Informational

Supported Languages

Chinese Simplified, Spanish

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MotionPoint enables us to serve patients and their families more effectively by providing them with timely and accurate information online in their preferred language.

Jeff Stewart

Assistant Vice President, Digital Communications, VITAS Healthcare

End-of-life care is often a difficult topic, and it can be especially challenging for non-English speaking U.S. residents. Deeply-held cultural views about death and dying, combined with language issues, can fuel misunderstanding of the subject and the services that surround it. VITAS Healthcare, the nation's leading provider of end-of-life care, recognised this situation and determined that offering their content in local languages - including via multilingual websites - would greatly help defuse it.

"We want to be sure our services are available to those who need them, without language as a barrier," said Jeff Stewart, Assistant Vice President of Digital Communications at VITAS. "We've always translated our printed materials,and decided to offer Spanish and Chinese versions of our website to better serve those local communities online."

Seeking a Solution

VITAS searched for a website translation solution that would free its marketing team from the time-consuming work required to deploy and operate multilingual websites. They also wanted to ensure high quality and accurate translations, reflecting the language's original tone and cultural nuance. "We selected MotionPoint because it offered an ideal combination of automation for cost-savings and speed, with human translation to handle the nuances and emotional aspects of our content," Stewart said.

 

VITAS evaluated different options and chose MotionPoint to deploy, operate and optimise its websites in Spanish and Chinese

 

"The topics we deal with are emotionally charged and require thoughtful and appropriate translation," noted Stewart. "That was a major reason we decided against using machine translation. For instance, when translating the word 'death,' the automated translation would use the word 'kill,' which could frighten potential patients. Due to the sensitive nature of how we convey the end of life in our websites, we know that writing, and translating it, is truly an art form that cannot be automated."

The translations are not only timely and accurate, they’re also culturally sensitive.

Jeff Stewart

Assistant Vice President, Digital Communications, VITAS Healthcare

Lean Team, Turn-Key Solution

VITAS's lean marketing team valued the turn-key solution that MotionPoint provided. "Our marketing team is dedicated to supporting our 44 programmes across the country with their marketing needs and doesn't have the bandwidth to handle our website translations and localizations," said Stewart. "We needed a hands-off process in both respects, and that's what MotionPoint delivered."

Stewart was also impressed by MotionPoint's seamless translation of images. "I find great value in MotionPoint's selection of culturally relevant images to match the translated content. It makes our process much more efficient," he noted..

Automated Technology and Precise Translation

Stewart also appreciates MotionPoint's proxy-based technology, which automatically identifies changes to VITAS's English-language site, alerts MotionPoint's human translators to translate content and makes it available on the localised sites - typically within one working day.

“MotionPoint’s technology keeps all of our websites in sync and ensures that our patients and their families always have access to the latest information, across multiple languages,” Stewart said.

"The translations are not only timely and accurate, they're also culturally sensitive," he continued. "We occasionally send a translated page to one of our local speakers just to be sure the meaning is correct in the larger context of the site. They always love it; there's never been an issue."

Broader Access Drives Greater Understanding

VITAS's localised Chinese and Spanish websites are helping the company achieve its goals of giving all patients access to hospice and palliative care, and helping everyone understand how these services can preserve a loved one's quality of life until the end.
As the nation's leader in hospice services, VITAS cares for over 16,000 patients daily, yet the company competes with thousands of local, regional and national providers. From a business perspective, the multilingual websites provide a valuable competitive advantage. Most importantly, the multilingual websites demonstrate VITAS' commitment to all patients and their communities.

 

>VITAS's localised Chinese and Spanish websites are helping the company achieve its goals of giving all patients access to hospice and palliative care

 

Website

vitas.com

Industry

Healthcare

Type

Informational

Supported Languages

Chinese Simplified, Spanish

Share
 

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