How Hospitals Screw You if You Don't Speak English

Doctors aren’t doing nearly enough to care for their non-English speaking patients.

Doctors aren’t doing nearly enough to care for their non-English speaking patients.
I spend a lot of my time harping about the importance of communication in the field of healthcare, whether it’s between primary services and consulting subspecialists, providers and patients, or providers and family members of patients.

The times when effective communication between patients and providers is hindered prove especially difficult. If the clinical condition precludes getting an accurate history from a patient, then we can usually rely on the objective data presented to us to come to a conclusion about how best to proceed. We ultimately hope that once we solve the underlying issues, we will in fact be able to talk to our patients and guide their care accordingly.

But what happens when the reason for poor communication is an unfeasible barrier?
2013 census data indicated that there are more than 40 million foreign-born people living in the U.S. Nearly 50 percent of this group have what is known as “limited English proficiency” (LEP), and our health care system repeatedly fails them. Without being able to effectively communicate with patients, a physician’s ability to take an appropriate history and physical becomes severely limited...