Frequently Asked Questions

Click on Independent Contractor Registration under the Interpreters tab on our website. Complete and submit your registration form. Please also submit proof of liability insurance and a business license from the city in which you are based. Once your registration is received, we will be in touch. Note: proof of liability insurance is required.

If you login to Gridcheck, proceed to your invoice tab, and notice ANYTHING in the session that doesn’t look right, please contact the Partners’ office right away. We will need to fix the session BEFORE you invoice. You can call or email, and we will make the necessary adjustments right away.

When accepting assignments from Partners in Communication LLC it is to be assumed, unless discussed prior, that if a team interpreter is unable to attend an assignment and is giving less than 48-hours notice, then the remaining interpreter will attend the assignment to support communication with the Deaf and hearing stakeholders. 

 

In a situation where a team interpreter is unable to make it to an assignment, it is our philosophy and policy, in most cases, that the remaining interpreter still attends the assignment. The rationale behind this is to have the remaining interpreter assist the clients with next steps and/or to offer minimal interpreting. We believe that members of the Deaf community should have access to an interpreter even if only to communicate next steps with the hearing stakeholders. As the attending interpreter in this situation, we ask you to self-advocate and never subject yourself to harm. The Partners in Communication LLC staff will also set this expectation with the requesting office, letting them know that the interpreter’s intent is not to interpret as usual but to provide communication support that fits with the situation. The interpreter is not expected to interpret the whole assignment but rather to negotiate what is reasonable.

If you accepted an assignment and we are still looking for a team then the final confirmation of the session is CONTINGENT on a team being assigned. If we are unable to find a team then the job will likely be canceled or in some cases the session will be changed to accommodate a single interpreter. If you are still waiting for the final confirmation and you have an opportunity to take other work or make other plans, please consider checking with us to see if we can issue the final confirmation. If you do not wish to hold this spot on your schedule, we will understand, please let us know. We will communicate with you along the way — letting you know if a team is found or if the job is still un-teamed at the 72 / 48 / and 24 hour marks. If an assignment is “contingent on a team” it will not be billable until a final confirmation is sent. Our aim is transparency, so please ask us about jobs if you have specific questions or have suggestions for filling a session.

Interpreters working with Partners In Communication LLC must possess national certification (RID, NAD, NIC; or EIPA levels 4-5 for K-12 work). Additionally, proof of liability insurance and a business license issued from the city in which you live is required. A degree in higher education, in any field of focus, is preferred but not required. We value integrity, ethical decision-making, and a supportive teaming approach.

Contact Partners In Communication LLC with your desire to work. Upon successful completion of our paperwork and interview process we will grant you access to our online scheduling system, from which we send queries for work. Within the system you can keep your availability up to date, submit your invoices and view your schedule on line. Please note: If a customer specifically requests you by name we will honor that request by checking with you before offering the assignment to another interpreter.

Partners In Communication LLC is not an employer of interpreters; we coordinate and sub-contract with interpreters. Independent Contractors negotiate their own rates with us individually. We include a premium of two hours per job along with a 48-hour cancellation policy. Additionally, interpreters can be reimbursed for mileage at the current IRS rate if they so choose. We also reimburse for parking and public transportation.

Each interpreter sets his/her own rate(s). Some things to keep in mind that might help when determining your own rate: 

 

• • Years of Experience
  • Certifications Held
  • Degrees Held
  • Determining What is Competitive

 

 

Travel charges can be reported by logging on to www.gridcheck.com, sending an email to partners@partnersincommunicationllc.com, or placing a call to 800-975-8150. NOTE: If you have an ongoing assignment or a job for which you already know the mileage or transit fees, those numbers can be entered on the Travel Charges tab at any time prior to invoicing. 

 

Travel charges must be entered by the end of the day on the Saturday of the week that the job occurred so they can be captured for customer invoicing purposes (customer invoicing tends to be done first thing on Sunday mornings). Interpreters are not eligible to bill for travel charges once the Partners’ invoice has been submitted to the customer.

Invoices are submitted via your confidential Gridcheck login.

Invoices are paid Net-30 days. Please submit your invoices no more than once a week for ease of processing on our end. Also, all jobs should be invoiced within the calendar year of the job. Invoices are paid each Friday; submitting your invoice for the week each Friday will net you payment weekly after you have passed 30 days net since your initial submission.

 

Teams are provided for most assignments lasting longer than 1.5 hours. Depending on the nature/complexity of the assignment, a team person may also be provided for shorter assignments.

 

If you are at an assignment and the client does not show, please wait for 25 – 30 minutes then contact our office. We will likely ask you to check with the requester or point of contact for the assignment, letting them know the client has not yet arrived and asking whether they would like you to continue waiting or if you are free to leave. In some instances, like a Dr. appointment, they will not have the flexibility in their day’s schedule to see the client after a certain point and they may tell you to go ahead and leave. In other situations they may feel that there is still a chance the client will arrive or they want to ‘get what they are paying for’ and will ask you to stay for the full time you are booked. Either way, so that we can be prepared should anyone ask us about the situation, please communicate what happened with our office.

 

If you are scheduled to be at a teamed assignment and your team does not show up please contact Partners In Communication LLC immediately. Please call (800-975-8150) or email (partners@partnersincommunicationllc.com) us as soon as you can. Do not interpret without first contacting us. Protecting your health is of the utmost importance to us. We must decide together how to proceed.

 

Details on one job can have an impact on future assignments. If any of the details of the job change substantially, please let us know so we can make the necessary corrections on our end.

 

In a continuous effort to provide excellent customer service to all with whom we work, we decided to instate a formal policy on late arrivals/leaving jobs early/jobs running long. Each of these instances impact billing from us to the customer and invoicing from you to us. Please see below for our policy:

• • Call the office any time you are running late for an assignment or unexpectedly need to leave early.
  • If you are released early from a job please call the office to let us know.
  • Call the office once it appears as though a job will run long; we may need to get authorization prior to you staying beyond the initially requested time.
  • If you are 10 or more minutes late to an assignment, we will reduce what we bill the customer in 15 minute increments. This means that the time for which you will be able to invoice will be reduced accordingly. Example: If you are 10 minutes late we will deduct .25 from billing. If you are 25 minutes late we will deduct .50 from billing.
  • If you need to leave an assignment early we will adjust billing/invoicing in the same manner listed above.

 

Our customers have paid for a block of time and get uncomfortable when the interpreter is not there for the requested time. We understand that sometimes life happens; please keep in touch with us when it does so we can be fair to those we serve.

We appreciate your support and welcome any feedback/dialogue you may wish to add.

 

Once accepting a session in Gridcheck you will have the opportunity to view the full details of that session and upload it to your calendar. However, the job is not considered fully confirmed until you have received the official confirmation email sent by one of the office staff. On rare occasions, the official confirmation may come in the form of a phone call or text, but this would only happen in extenuating circumstances.

 

Additional information is now required to be collected by vendors on medical interpreting jobs. Yes, this includes us! The State of California and other governmental agencies are pushing these new requirements in an effort to prove the guaranteed right to timely access for under-represented patients, whether they be served through Medicare, Medi-Cal, or private insurance. This is a blanket requirement for all medical systems, vendors, and hospital employees.
One of the main laws is the 2018 CALIFORNIA KNOX-KEENE HEALTH CARE SERVICE PLAN ACT, which requires that: “All health care service plans must receive a license from the Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) in order to operate in the state of California. To become licensed, a health care service plan must establish compliance with rules relating to health care service plan operations and business practices as set forth in the Knox-Keene Act. In addition, some areas of regulation require health care service plans to regularly report on operational measures to ensure ongoing compliance with the Act.”
The regulations set forth by this Act which pertain to medical jobs covered through Partners and the services we provide, are:

• • 1367.03. Development of standards for timely access to health care services.
  • 1367.031. Information regarding standards for timely access to health care services.
  • 1367.035. Standards for timely access to health care services; required inclusion of network adequacy data.

 

How this effects YOU and the information we ask you to provide on medical interpreting assignments . . .
We now require you to report the following for all medical assignments:

• • Interpreter Arrival Time
  • Actual Start Time
  • Actual End Time

 

Definitions
Scheduled Start Time = appointment start time on listed on your confirmation.
Actual Start Time = once patient has been taken back for their appointment. The clock starts when the nurse begins the appointment with taking vitals, etc. (no longer considered to be waiting).
Actual End Time = once the patient has finished using services whether in original the appointment spot, or another part of the facility.

A: A bundled assignment is an assignment that consists of more than one session being counted as a single session. A two hour minimum applies, and often times this means that each session is billed at one hour. However, if the start time of the first session and the ending time of the last session go beyond the two hour window, then the billable time continues through the ending time of the last session. Examples of bundled assignments include back to back academic classes, back to back appointments at a doctor’s office, and multiple meetings at one site.

As schedulers, we have found that some times are harder to back-fill an assignment than others. We have also found that some colleagues respond better to another colleague in a pinch than they do to a message from a scheduling associate. Once you are assigned to a session, the requester, the client and the team interpreter, if there is one, are all expecting the session to go off without a hitch. If we are having trouble filling an assignment you can no longer keep, we might ask for your assistance finding a replacement. This not only ensures communication access for the session in question, but also allows all participants to not associate your name with a session that went poorly because you couldn’t attend.