Massachusetts Hospitals Face Difficulty Providing Interpreter Services, Particularly to New Immigrants
In recent months, Boston-area hospitals have experienced an influx of patients who are recent immigrants from Africa, causing a "language overload" for the facilities, which are required to provide translators for non-English speaking patients, the Boston Globe reports. Many of the patients speak "low-incidence" languages, such as Tigrinya, Dan and Ta Bedawie, for which there are few or no interpreters available, the Globe reports. Under a state law passed in July 2001, hospital emergency rooms are required to provide interpreters for patients with "poor English skills." To translate tribal dialects and other foreign languages, Massachusetts hospitals typically use international phone-translation companies, which "connect a patient to a translator" for fees that can "reach into the hundreds" of dollars based on the length of the call. However, even these services "have limits," the Globe reports. LanguageLine, a popular translator service, provides translation for 148 languages -- only "a fraction of the estimated 6,700 languages" spoken throughout the world. Bob Marra of the not-for-profit organization Health Care for All said that area hospitals are working together to form a system that "would allow them to more easily swap information about interpreters." He added that hospitals must first establish a "set of minimum standards" to test interpreters for all state hospitals, so that interpreters do not have to be tested "every time they work at a different hospital." Barbara Ferrer, deputy director of the Boston Public Health Commission, said she plans to hold meetings with care providers this spring to "figure out ways to set up interpreter pools" (Rodriguez, Boston Globe, 3/14).
Training to Talk
Meanwhile, Massachusetts Bay Community College this fall will launch a medical interpreter program, certifying individuals who speak Spanish and Portuguese, the "most widely spoken" languages in the area, the Boston Globe reports. The courses will include training in medical terminology, "cultural competence" and the U.S. health care system. Pilot versions of the program, funded in part by a $61,000 grant from the MetroWest Community Health Care Foundation, will begin as early as April. Lily Hsu, dean of nursing and health professions at Massachusetts Bay Community College, said target enrollment for the pilot program is 20 students (Abelson, Boston Globe, 3/5).
