How to Enable Phone Calls for Your LEP Patients
Day after day, patients call their healthcare providers to get the information they need. Especially when it comes to medical questions and appointment confirmations. That is of course, if the patients are comfortable speaking English. For patients who have limited English proficiency (LEP) however, contacting medical facilities is almost never easy. This is exactly why multi-lingual calling is so important in the medical field.
Why are medical interpreter phone services so important?
In the United States, over 25 million people have limited English proficiency. Odds are, some of these LEP people are patients in our local communities. Unfortunately, leaving a large handful of local LEP patients unable to contact medical facilities, even if they needed to. Oftentimes, this leaves LEP patients with no way to ask questions or tell staff important information over the phone.
Without a way to have conversations over the phone with LEP patients, healthcare communication can be quite underwhelming. When there is a small chance of getting help in their language, LEP patients are not likely to receive the same care as English speaking patients. Unless of course, clinics have a medical interpreter phone service.
Multi-lingual Calling for Healthcare Patients
A medical interpreter phone service, or multi-lingual calling, helps clinics remove language barriers over the phone with ease. For Hands Up, multi-lingual calling has two parts:
- Being able to receive inbound calls from LEP patients
- and also the ability to make outbound phone calls to contact LEP patients.
In effect, this makes it possible for patients to stay in touch with their providers and other healthcare professionals. At the same time, it allows healthcare institutions to stay in touch with their LEP patients whenever they need to. Ultimately, allowing healthcare institutions to save time, energy, and also money. But first, how does Hands Up’s multi-lingual calling work?
How does Hands Up’s multilingual calling work?
To start, it helps to look at the inbound and outbound calling functions separately. While both inbound and outbound calls involve a quick connection to a professional phone interpreter, each of them are slightly different. Here’s a look at what it’s like to receive an incoming call from an LEP patient.
Receiving phone calls from patients in other languages
Let’s assume your clinic needs to be accessible to the Latino community, and you need to answer calls from Latino patients who speak Spanish. To make this possible, your clinic receives a unique phone number for Spanish speakers to dial. When the Spanish patient dials this unique number, they are automatically connected to a professional interpreter who speaks both Spanish and English. Then, the magic happens.
How does the staff member understand the LEP patient?
Once the Spanish speaking patient connects to the Spanish interpreter, the phone call between the two automatically routes to your clinic. At this point, a staff member answers the call where the Spanish caller and interpreter are already on the line. In this three-way conference call, the interpreter will tell the English speaking staff member what the Spanish caller is saying, allowing the Latino patient to speak freely.
How does the LEP patient understand the staff member?
Vice versa, whenever the staff member needs to respond to the Spanish caller, the interpreter can relay the message in Spanish to the patient. In turn, the interpreter is able to speak for healthcare staff members and for the Spanish caller to help them both have an effective conversation with each other. On the other hand, making phone calls to LEP patients is similar, but slightly different.
Making multi-lingual phone calls to patients in other languages
Fortunately, healthcare organizations have the ability to make outbound phone calls in other languages, just as easily as they can receive calls. This time, let’s assume your healthcare organization is looking to make a phone call to an LEP Spanish speaking patient.
- When calling a Spanish speaking patient, the staff member would first call the Hands Up conference calling phone number.
- After dialing the number, the staff member would select the language of the person he / she intends to call. (1 for Spanish, 2 for Swahili, etc.)
- Next, the staff member connects to an interpreter who speaks English and Spanish.
- In seconds, the interpreter dials the Spanish speaking patient into the call and helps everyone communicate in a language that makes sense.
Learn more about why you should call your LEP patients directly.
What are the benefits of multi-lingual calling?
Overall, there are many benefits to having a multi-lingual calling system. Especially in the healthcare industry. Below are the top 5 benefits for healthcare organizations that use multi-lingual calling.
Reduce or eliminate no show appointments
When the interpreter shows up but the LEP patient doesn’t, healthcare facilities still receive an invoice for the interpreter. However, what if the LEP patient had a way to call and tell you about the cancellation ahead of time? By allowing patients to schedule or reschedule appointments, healthcare institutions can reduce or even eliminate costs associated with no show appointments.
Increase patient satisfaction
When patients feel understood, they typically become better patients. With access to multi-lingual calling, you can ensure you’re doing everything in your power to make sure patients stay happy and keep coming back.
Save staff time on the phone
If your healthcare staff has tried to have phone conversations with LEP’s in the past, they can tell you how time-consuming it can be. Multi-lingual calling eliminates the hassle of “doing the best you can” while trying to communicate with LEP patients over the phone.
Improve your communication with patients
When LEP patients can contact and be contacted by your healthcare facility, you’re giving them the same care as everyone else. As a result, patients can receive equal care through an equal opportunity to communicate.
Improve the quality of patient care
Communication is key when it comes to providing quality healthcare. If phone conversations aren’t possible with patients, their ability to ask questions and receive information is limited. Potentially affecting their quality of care. With an option to communicate with LEP patients over the phone, you will be doing everything you need to ensure your patients receive the highest quality of care.
The importance of communication is an ongoing initiative in the healthcare industry. Whether it be in-person, through writing, or through video, phone communication with patients is critical. To learn more about multi-lingual calling, download the 5 most frequently asked questions here.
[ABTM id=1966]