As of 2011, 25.3 million people that live in United States are limited in how much English they can speak. This large number of limited English proficiency (LEP) individuals include Spanish-speakers, which is a large population in the US that continues to grow. With these changes, health care providers need to adapt in order to care for both English and non-English speaking patients (Naples, 2015).
Statistics
- using bilingual providers at the time of admission decreased length of stay and readmission rates over the next 30 days after discharge (Lindholm et al, 2012)
- The number of Spanish-speaking patients in the U.S. is so large that it makes up about 3.5% of the country’s population (Fernández & Pérez-Stable, 2015).
- Only 19.6% of hospitals reported having staff whose sole purpose was translation (Torres et. al, 2008).
- 98.7% reported having some form of interpretation services such as bilingual providers, interpreters, or access to telephone interpreters (Torres et. al, 2008).