The National Council on Interpreting in Healthcare (NCIHC) was established in 1998 with a mission to promote language access in healthcare. It developed a National Code of Ethics for healthcare interpreters in 2002-2004 and a set of National Standards of Practice based on the Code of Ethics to define competent practice. The Standards of Practice, consisting of 32 standards grouped under 9 headings, are meant to ensure consistent quality of interpreter performance and be used for training, hiring, performance monitoring, and certification purposes.