Texas hospitals are seeing more and more patients who walk through their doors and are unable to speak English. Even without complete communication, the hospital is obligated to provide treatment services for the patient.

According to spokesperson Caytie Martin of Northwest Texas Healthcare System, "We can definitely see in the past year that the need continues to be there for interpretation." Therefore, hospitals have enlisted the services of interpreters to offer provide superior service to non-English-speaking patients. Over-the-phone interpretation is also on the rise for such medical facilities.

Many Texas hospitals now provide interpretation and translation services in about 20 different languages. The top five requested languages in October 2008 were Spanish, Burmese, Somali, Farsi, and Vietnamese. Those that experienced the biggest increase in usage demand between October 2007 and October 2008 were Burmese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Somali, and Spanish.

27 January 2009