N.Y.-Presbyterian Vows To Speak All of City’s Languages
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With immigrant New Yorkers speaking a total of about 200 languages, New York-Presbyterian Hospital’s new slogan, “We speak your language,” is no small promise.
At the hospital’s Washington Heights location, a 72-year-old Dominican immigrant with cancer, Altagracia Alfonso, said she thinks she has already seen a shift. Despite spending nearly 40 years in New York, she speaks almost no English. Since her diagnosis in September, she said she has had three chemotherapy sessions during which she could not understand the physicians for most of the procedure.
Monday’s treatment was different. When Ms. Alfonso, a former factory worker, said, “I don’t speak English,” a nurse immediately brought a translator. “I felt so relieved,” she said. “I understood.”
The new effort started with signs featuring the slogan written in 10 languages, including Haitian Creole, Hebrew, and Russian, put up in emergency rooms and waiting areas on Monday. “This is only the beginning of our campaign to raise awareness of the interpreter services program among patients and staff,” a spokeswoman for the hospital, Linda Betharte, said in a statement. Other efforts will include increased staff education, an interpreter services manager for the entire hospital system, and a steering committee to continue improving the program.
“New York-Presbyterian is by far the largest hospital to agree to standards like this, which are pretty comprehensive,” the director of the New York Civic Participation Project, Gouri Sadhwani, said. “It’s a wonderful example of a hospital realizing a need in the community and working with the community to address that need – and it’s a great display of power from Washington Heights.”
Immigrant organizers and city officials have placed special emphasis on promoting language access in hospitals, framing them as a basic human right.
“Sometimes issues percolate for a few years and all of a sudden they catch fire,” state Senator Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat whose district includes Washington Heights, said. “Ordinary New Yorkers understand health care without language access is no health care at all.”
There is also a legal basis: Federal, state, and local laws all mandate that hospitals provide basic interpretation and translation services for patients with low levels of English.
In January, the comptroller’s office issued a report documenting how lack of language access had caused physical damage to many patients who were misdiagnosed or incorrectly operated on. “This is a major problem for patients and is costly for the entire health care system because poor communication deters people from receiving timely treatment and results in increased costs and inefficiencies overall,” the report said.
While Presbyterian fared relatively well in that report, local Washington Heights community members were dissatisfied with the service, complaining in particular of a lack of Spanish speakers. A coalition of local elected officials, community groups, and citywide groups working in translation issues coalesced to fight for language access. The group they formed, the Language Access Coalition, issued a report in July saying two-thirds of Spanish-speaking patients were not offered translation services or could not find a Spanish-speaking doctor.
Yesterday, they celebrated a victory at Presbyterian.
While individual hospitals are gradually making changes, Mr. Schneiderman said the crucial next step is legislative action in Albany. A bill pending in the Assembly would require medical translators for every hospital and set up standards for translation certification and other related services.
“We’re on the road to ensuring language access in the city,” he said. “Years from now, people are going to look back and say, ‘How could it have taken so long?'”