Abstract
Background: Few people with limited English proficiency are provided with the services of a healthcare interpreter when admitted to hospital. This retrospective study utilised health administrative data to explore which patients with limited English proficiency were provided with a healthcare interpreter during their hospital admission. Method: A retrospective analysis of health administrative data for adult overnight-stay patients admitted to a public hospital in a region of significant cultural and linguistic diversity in Sydney, Australia in 2014-2015. Descriptive analyses were used to explore demographic and diagnostic data. Chi-square and analysis of variance were used to test for association between variables. Results: The site hospital provided for 19,627 overnight-stay episodes of care over the one year period. Emergency admissions made up 70.5% (n"‰="‰13,845) of all hospital admissions and obstetric patients 11.7% (n"‰="‰2291). For 15.7% (n"‰="‰3074) of episodes of care a healthcare interpreter was identified at hospital admission as being required. In 3.7% (n"‰="‰727) of episodes of care a healthcare interpreter was provided. Patients who received an interpreter were more likely to be female, of a younger age and admitted to hospital for childbirth. Conclusions: A minority of patients with limited English proficiency received a healthcare interpreter during their episode of care. The majority of interpreter services were provided to obstetric patients.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 348 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | BMC Health Services Research |
| Volume | 18 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Open Access - Access Right Statement
© The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Keywords
- English language
- hospital patients
- medical statistics
- obstetrics
- translating and interpreting