Cali Granita had left Telluride, and her work in the medical industry, behind when she went home to Argentina to earn a degree as a court interpreter. She then moved to the east coast and planned to begin a new career, but after a chance run-in with Ximena Rebolledo-Leon, a longtime nurse at the Telluride Medical Center, her plans began to change. 

I was studying in Florida to go to the courts,” Granita remembers. “When I was coming back to Colorado, Ximena and I met in the airport in Atlanta and we sat together at the plane and she was like ‘you are the person I have been waiting for. I have a job for you in Telluride.’” 

Granita is now the Medical Center’s Bilingual Health Access Facilitator. She is the first person to ever serve in the role. Her work has quickly become crucial, as she helps to organize appointments, transportation, billing, and interpretation services for many of the Health Center’s patients. 

“The health system in the states, it’s a little crazy. So my role here is to help those patients — English speakers or Spanish speakers — to make appointments at Montrose Memorial, or if they have to go to St. Mary’s in Grand Junction, if they have to see a specialist, if they have to find a dentist that is in network with their insurance. All these things where they don’t know what to do, I do some research, I call, I get them connected, and I make the appointments,” Granita says. 

Navigating the health system is especially difficult for people who speak english as a second language, or are undocumented and therefore uninsured. Challenges accessing health care come to fall acutely on Telluride’s immigrant and latino population. Rebolledo-Leon says that witnessing how these challenges affected Telluride's latino population sparked her efforts to create Granita’s position. 

“Think about our immigrant population, who is the backbone of this community, who without them doors do not open, the Medical Center does not open, it doesn't get clean, all of these pieces of our essential workforce and our fellow community members — if they cannot access medicine at a price they can afford, it’s hugely problematic” Rebolledo-Leon says. 

Rebolledo-Leon says that the job, beyond being a mere interpreter, is someone who will advocate for their patients in a complicated health system. 

“It’s not just a bilingual person, it has to be someone who is willing to get on the phone and plead with specialists for a discount for their undocumented and therefore uninsured patients. Do you know what I mean? It’s having the wherewithal to know what to do and to fight for it,” Rebolledo-Leon says.  

In Granita, it seems that the Medical Center has found that person. Granita laughs as she recalls her former nickname around the Med Center offices. 

“Actually, my nickname before was ‘Mama Cali,’ because I was always like ‘Oh I know someone here, go talk to them’... ‘Oh I know this person here, maybe they can help you!’” Granita Recalls.  When Ximena said ‘this is meant for you,’ I’m like — ‘maybe, maybe it is’…After all these years of knowing people.

The work of finding resources, connections, and funding for patients extends to all hours of the day, Granita says. Many clinics in the area have no medical interpreters, so that job often falls to her. 

“So, for example I have a patient who’s been going to Norwood to the dentist office there, and they don’t have an interpreter so she calls me. So I go to a room and I interpret for her,” Granita says. “I take the extra step. If I’m not busy I can do it, and for the most part I’ve been able to help. But, it doesn't end here and it's not only eight to five. You know…it goes [into all hours]”

Both Granita and Rebolledo-Leon say that the position is constantly at risk of losing funding. The Telluride Medical Center makes money largely through reimbursement from insurance companies, so un and underinsured patients are simply not as lucrative for a medical center always trying to make ends meet. Nevertheless, Rebolledo-Leon says that the new position has already had a clear impact. 

“We’re scrambling always to fund it, but — you know — Cali, she’s incredible. We’ve seen our mammography rates improve, we’ve seen our annual physical exam rates improve. We are just reaching more of our immigrant patient population, and anyone who needs just a little more assistance making things happen, they’re also benefiting from this,” Rebolledo-Leon says. 

In the ongoing fight to make the US healthcare system more navigable and equitable, it may be that Granita’s work is just a drop in the bucket. But according to Rebolledo-Leon, patients across Telluride are already feeling the many, many, ripples.