Language & Accessibility

Patients who wait for the bilingual staffer

In many practices, a Spanish-speaking caller is put on hold until the one bilingual staff member is free, or asked to call back when she is in. Callers who speak a less common language may have no one at all, and some simply stop calling.

Community health centers and urban primary care groups on eClinicalWorks feel this most, but almost every practice has patients who are more comfortable in another language, particularly older patients and their families.

How language works on the call

Katie speaks with patients in 59 languages. On a line set to answer in English and Spanish, a caller who speaks Spanish gets Spanish, and the call proceeds exactly as it would in English: identity, request, then booking or routing. Korean calls can book end to end too. In her other 56 languages Katie understands and answers, but booking is not verified yet, so the booking request goes to your staff.

Your staff still receive the same structured summary they get for every call, so the person who follows up knows what was asked and can arrange an interpreter for the callback if one is needed.

Accessibility beyond language

Language is only one barrier. Phone menus, hold queues and rushed conversations shut out plenty of patients who speak English perfectly well.

Think of the patient with arthritis who struggles with a keypad, the caregiver juggling a phone and a wheelchair, or the caller with mild hearing loss who needs a time said twice. A conversation in plain speech, with no menu and no clock running, serves all of them better.

• No keypad menu to navigate, which matters for older callers
• Dates, times and addresses repeated on request
• A transfer to staff during office hours for anyone who wants a person
• Booking end to end in English, Spanish and Korean, with requests in her other languages passed to staff

Documenting language needs

Many practices keep a preferred language field in eClinicalWorks so staff can book an interpreter for the visit. A phone call in another language is a natural prompt to check that the field is current.

With MedReception Autopilot, the call summary itself can be filed to the patient's chart from your staff's own signed-in browser, so the phone contact is part of the record whichever language it happened in.

Equal access, not a separate track

The goal is that a patient who calls in another language gets the same result as anyone else: a refill request routed to the same nurse, an urgent concern escalated under the same rules, and, in Spanish or Korean, an appointment booked into the same schedule. In Katie's other 56 languages booking is not verified yet, so the booking request reaches your staff. A separate, slower path for non-English callers is what most practices are trying to get away from.

It also takes pressure off bilingual staff, who are often pulled away from their own work every time a call in their language comes in.