When caregivers and patients don't understand each other, disaster can ensue, says an article in the current The New England Journal of Medicine. In "Language Barriers to Health Care in the United States," Glenn Flores, M.D., describes horrendous miscommunication when either there's no medical interpreter available or the interpreter is incompetent. In one case, a mother was instructed to put oral antibiotics in a child's ears. In another, a doctor poorly versed in Spanish translated "she hit herself" as "I hit her," resulting in a mother losing custody of her two children after one of them fell off her tricycle. A hospital ended up paying a $71 million damage suit because an 18-year-old boy wasn't treated soon enough for a ruptured artery: Paramedics had interpreted his complaint of "intoxicado" as "intoxicated" rather than "nauseated," and the hospital wasted precious hours on a drug-and-alcohol workup. The patient ended up quadriplegic. Though hospitals are legally required to provide translation services under a variety of federal and state laws, the unfunded mandates don't carry much clout. Flores advocates laws forcing payers to cover the cost of interpreters, which a 2002 OMB study says would cost only about $4 per patient.
For more information on language barriers:
- read The New England Journal of Medicine article
- and check out this USA Today report