Texas Health Care Providers Increasingly Seeking Bilingual Employees

To adapt to a rise in Texas' Hispanic population, the state's health care providers are putting more emphasis on hiring bilingual employees, the Dallas Morning News reports. Hispanics, many of whom are recent immigrants, represent 32% of the state's population. Dr. Kathy Walls, owner and operator of Universal Health Services, a home health care and hospice provider that specializes in bilingual services, said that many Hispanics prefer a doctor or health worker who is of the same ethnicity. At UHS, 20% of the 150 employees are Hispanic. Currently, the company relies on referrals "rather than traditional advertising" to find bilingual workers. Overall staff shortages in the health care industry have "hamper[ed]" Texas care providers' efforts to recruit bilingual health professionals, industry experts said. "When you find that perfect person, it's kind of hard to turn them down" even if they don't speak Spanish, Grant Fithian, a senior consultant at the health care staffing firm Martin, Fletcher, said. But even when health employers find Spanish-speaking care providers, the workers sometimes lack the credentials to work in the United States. "[W]hen a person comes from a Latin country ... their credentials do not necessarily transfer to the health profession that they used to do. So then they have to start all over again," Denise Gardner, assistant dean of continuing and workforce education at El Centro College, said. To boost the number of Spanish-speaking provider, El Centro has begun offering Spanish language courses for medical workers (Godinez, Dallas Morning News, 12/16).