BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – UAB Hospital has installed more than 200 dual-handset telephone consoles in patient care areas to enable limited-English-proficient patients to conveniently communicate with their caregivers about complex medical and other issues.
Through a UAB Hospital partnership with the telephone-based language services company CyraCom (SEAR-uh-com), patients and caregivers can be linked within an average of 15 seconds with off-site interpreters fluent in more than 150 languages. The distinctive, blue-colored telephones are located throughout the hospital, including emergency and intensive care units, as well as maternity, cancer, neurological, cardiovascular and other patient care units.
UAB Hospital has long provided in-person interpretation services. But occasionally, interpreters are not available within a convenient time frame — especially when relatively uncommon languages are involved.
“UAB’s world-class care attracts patients from Europe, the Middle East, South America and many other locales, and it’s not at all unusual for international patients to require language services,” said Hans Donkersloot, M.S.H.A., assistant vice president of UAB Hospital. “The use of highly qualified, simultaneous medical interpreters provided by CyraCom enhances the ease of direct communication between limited- and non-English speaking patients and our health care providers.”
Donkersloot said the number of Americans who speak languages other than English at home also has increased dramatically in recent years. “We are glad to provide another service that meets the changing needs of our community,” he said.
CyraCom’s patented phone system is named “ClearLink.” The company is a provider of language services to nearly 1,000 hospitals and health care facilities nationwide. The company also is donating its interpretation services to the local Ronald McDonald House, where an increasing number of limited- and non-English-proficient families also seek service.
According to CyraCom, UAB Hospital is the leading provider of the company’s services in Alabama, and this year is expected to rank nationally among the top 10 percent of the nearly 1,000 hospitals and health care facilities the company serves.
Reflective of an increasingly diverse U.S. population, Spanish is the language most in need of interpreting at hospitals throughout the United States, according to CyraCom. To date, Turkish, Arabic, Vietnamese and languages native to China, such as Mandarin and Cantonese, follow respectively at UAB, where more than 30 languages needed interpreting in 2006.
ABOUT UAB HOSPITALThe 908-bed UAB Hospital is Alabama’s largest tertiary care facility and is the state’s only accredited Level 1 trauma center. It is part of the UAB Health System at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For more information, see www.health.uab.edu.
ABOUT CYRACOMCyraCom is a language services company for health care serving nearly 1,000 hospitals and health care facilities nationwide. The company provides over-the-phone interpretation in more than 150 languages 24 hours a day. It also provides document translation, program assessment and interpreter testing and training. For information, visit www.cyracom.com/news.
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