FAQs

Through the workgroups, DEC engages with researchers, advocacy organizations, payers, healthcare organizations, professional societies, policy makers and many others who are all working towards accessible healthcare for people with disabilities.

Sign up here to receive our quarterly newsletter.

Through the workgroups, DEC engages with researchers, advocacy organizations, payers, healthcare organizations, professional societies, policy makers and many others who are all working towards accessible healthcare for people with disabilities.

While we collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders our workgroups, the DEC Leaders workgroup is specifically targeted for individuals who work on the ground in their healthcare systems on disability accessibility initiatives.

Most often, these individuals hold titles at their healthcare organizations such as ADA Coordinator, 504 Officer, or Disability Accessibility Coordinator. If this sounds like you, we invite you to join us!

The DEC Leaders workgroup supports members in following ways:

1. DEC organizes a bi-weekly, virtual, confidential meeting to discuss challenges and successes in implementing disability accessibility initiatives in the healthcare setting. During these meetings we sometimes host guest speakers who are experts on specific topics of interest (click here to see examples of topics). There is also an active listerv that members use between meetings.

2. The DEC website centralizes the resources that support the initiatives that members are working on. Additionally, a restricted members area includes supplemental internal resources that are shared among members.

We prioritize reserving space for open engagement to discuss any active challenges that members are interested in discussing. Some examples of topics that we have previously discussed are:

• effective communication in healthcare
• accommodating patients with autism
• documentation of accommodations and disability status in the EHR
• accommodations for patients with disabilities during COVID-19 (visitor policies, clear masks), and
• guidelines for accessible medical equipment.

Through the workgroups, DEC engages with researchers, advocacy organizations, payers, healthcare organizations, professional societies, policy makers and many others who are all working towards accessible healthcare for people with disabilities. These efforts crosscut and engage individuals with all types of disabilities.