Have you or someone you know experienced a medical emergency in another country? When it happens, it can be scary – especially if you don’t speak the same language as the provider.
Intermountain Health is working to break down language barriers to provide equal access to care to everyone. In fact, they provide interpretation services to over 1-million patients every single month.
Carolos Martinez Morales is a Language Services and Cultural Competence Manager. He coordinates interpreters across Intermountain Health’s facilities. It’s a busy job, filling a crucial role.
“It’s emotionally taxing, but at the end of the day, had you not been there, that experience for that family would have been so much worse,” said Martinez Morales.
Understanding the doctor in a shared language can be hard enough. Having no way to understand them? That could mean patients could walk away not knowing the diagnosis they face, how they should care for a wound - the scenarios for possible confusion are endless.
Intermountain Health is the largest employer of certified medical interpreters in the state with a team of over 90 staffed interpreters in 9 languages including Spanish, Portuguese, American Sign Language, Tongan, Samoan, Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian and Marshallese.
Intermountain prioritizes getting interpreters to patients in person, but when time is of the essence, they offer a remote service at the touch of a button in over 200 languages.
“Anywhere where we see patients we want to make sure that people have equal access to our services and programs. And this allows us to do it timely, especially in rural areas or after hours,” said Martinez Morales.
Interpretation services are offered free of charge in all Intermountain Health facilities, at all points of contact, and during all hours of operation.
Click here to learn more about interpretation services available.
