It is essential for medical facilities to reach all of their patients, and have reliable channels through which to relay information to them. With technology evolving, there are more options available to contact patients, but what happens if they speak a different language? And, the Obamacare program has created even more demands related to documents to be translated.
Whether information is being given to patients through physical documents or through online records, it is important that those individuals can read in a language that is comfortable for them. Relying on standard machine translation could leave some patients in the dark, as a full translation will not necessarily have been provided.
Medical Records
Lorena Roldan is one such patient. Originally from Columbia, Roldan now resides in South Florida, but she explained to local news source WLRN that when she checks her medical records online she doesn’t always understand them. While there is the option to read her information in Spanish, Roldan said that various dialects are not accounted for.
“Sometimes the words are completely different for a person from Cuba and a person from Colombia, or for an Argentinean and a Mexican,” she said.
Dr. Kenneth Goodman, the director of the bioethics program at the University of Miami, suggested to WLRN that as medical records continue to go digital and more facilities turn to paperless options, there could be an increase in languages and dialects in healthcare applications (The Translation Company provides Portuguese and Spanish medical translation services among other languages).
Health Care Translations
Even accents will differ from one language to the next, Goodman said, which could eventually call for a need of dialect-specific mobile applications.
As hospitals and other facilities work to streamline workflow while still offering quality care, partnering with quality health care translation services could be greatly beneficial. The right translation company can guarantee that language subtleties are not overlooked, which will keep information accurate as it is given to patients.