Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog

Oh boy, you need to get this party started! No wonder there are no comments! Live your life man and do some interesting, exciting things...I know you had to study for years and years but your great learning is driving me mad! The key words: color, vibrancy, excitement, thrills. For example, tell us some funny stories about your patients.
 

Hey, I don't see anything wrong with this blog. It has some interesting information. Plus, my kids and I go to BMC, so it's pretty cool to see one of the doctors "on the outside," as it were.

Tricia
http://magickalmusings.net
 

OK, I read the article. It suggests that if you hire a high dollar interpreter, a complaint of mid torso discomfort will get you a diagnostic workup including blood tests, xrays, and a CT scan. Wow! Just what would have been done in the total abscence of verbal communication in every other hospital in the USA. The only information included in this article is that some medic says it's "intuitive" that people who don't speak English will have a tougher time getting care in a hospital in the USA, and that you can provide interpreters in Philadelphia for $850K (per year, per decade, per fortnight???). Everyone convinced? Yet another way to dump society's perceived evilness on the medical care system. They are setting up a scenario where it's your fault if your patient doesn't speak English (just as it's currently your fault if your patient is deaf-the doc has to pay for a deaf signer).
 

This country is becoming- nay, has become- absurd. I volunteered at a hospital over the summer, and they provided interpreters in over 40 different languages, along with the requisite paperwork (consent and release forms, patient's rights forms etc.). If anyone can't do the math on how much programs such as this cost, then they need to go back to high school.


It's not just the health care field where such problems manifest themselves. My mother works in a public school here in NYC, and each document for registration for the children is printed in 35+ languages. Ditto for many other government/civil services (DMV, welfare benefits etc.). The cost of such programs is undoubtedly enormous (just use your common sense- thousands and thousands of unique documents in 30-50 languages; the paper costs alone, neglecting interpreters etc., are astronomical), yet I fully expect to NEVER see an honest cost analysis done by any agency for fear of it being labeled not "politically correct".


The whole country is a farce, if you ask me. YES, having an interpreter at the local hospital would undoubtedly help; for the major secondary languages in the US (spanish, russian, chinese etc.), I'm all for it, particularly in urban areas. But 30-50 languages? At what point does it become too much? Beyond that, such services stretch hospitals already at the financial breaking point even further beyond their means. Who should pay for it? In my opinion, the ethnic groups of various urban areas who utilize a hospital's services should each chip in a dollar or two for an interpeter for their local hospital-- they'd EASILY generate enough revenue to provide a salary for an interpreter, given the number of non-english speaking immigrants in this country. Hospitals-- and more importantly, the taxpayers-- should be under NO OBLIGATION to provide translation services in 40+ languages. It's a tad extreme in my opinion. No other country does anything remotely like it as far as I know, and for good reason.


Just as with everything else in health care, people want things, but they don't want to pay for it. While the grant mentioned in the article is a nice gesture, it's certainly not a benefit that will be extended to every urban hospital, nor should it be necessarily, unless it was funded by private ethnic organizations who raised those funds from within their communities (rather than from the general tax base).