Spitzer Reaches Agreement With Two Brooklyn Hospitals To Provide Language Assistance For Patients With Limited English Proficiency

State Attorney General Spitzer today announced that he has signed ground-breaking agreements with Wyckoff Heights Medical Center and Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center in Brooklyn. The agreements commit each hospital to provide interpretation and translation services to patients with limited English proficiency ("LEP patients").

The communities served by the two hospitals - Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint in Brooklyn and Ridgewood in Queens - have a substantial need for language assistance services. According to the 2000 Census, close to 75,000 people living near and around the hospitals speak English either "not well" or "not at all." Both hospitals have acknowledged that a significant number of their patients speak only their native language, primarily Spanish. Additional demographic data suggest that many people in the neighborhoods served by the hospitals also speak Polish, Chinese, French Creole, and several South Asian languages.

Spitzer was joined at the news conference by U.S. Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, who has long fought for language assistance programs, and Assemblymen Adriano Espaillat, who discussed his proposed legislation (A. 5431) to provide for necessary language assistance services at hospitals statewide. Espaillat's legislation, which the Attorney General is supporting, would require state hospitals to ensure that those with limited proficiency in English receive necessary medical attention without delay.

"We're pleased that we were able to craft innovative, cost-effective agreements that will greatly enhance the ability of patients with limited English proficiency to communicate their health care needs and receive the best care possible," Spitzer said. "We hope these agreements will serve as models for other health care providers confronted with the challenges of serving linguistically diverse communities."

Working with the Office for Civil Rights of the United States Department of Health and Human Services ("OCR") to address complaints from Make The Road By Walking, a community-based organization, Spitzer began looking into Wyckoff's and Woodhull's policies and practices for serving LEP patients in the spring of 2002. Although each facility had significant language assistance resources available, such resources often were not utilized effectively because of insufficient coordination, monitoring, and evaluation, and in some cases, inadequate communication and training of the language assistance policies of front-line hospital staff. In some instances, patients had no choice but to rely on family members, friends, other patients or rudimentary hand signals to communicate their health concerns.

Spitzer commended both Wyckoff and Woodhull for recognizing the importance of the LEP issue and for working with his office and the federal government to develop comprehensive and cost-effective language assistance programs. Spitzer also thanked the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest for working with his Civil Rights Bureau to craft the agreements.

Highlights of the agreements include:

• An array of language assistance resources, with a preference for face-to-face interpretation, to be used in uniform order:
  
  
  • Designated staff to provide face-to-face interpretation services for LEP patients. (At Wyckoff, bilingual staff in each outpatient clinic and on each inpatient floor will provide interpretation services, while at Woodhull, full-time interpreters and bilingual Patient Navigators will be available to provide interpretation services for all hospital departments.)
    
    
  • Mandatory foreign language assessment and training in medical interpretation for all staff persons serving as interpreters.
    
    
  • Telephonic interpretation services available at all times.
    
    
• Patient choice of interpreter, allowing LEP patients to choose to use adult family members or friends if they prefer, as long as the person a patient selects is able to interpret the patient's needs accurately and completely.
  
  
• Translation of key documents and hospital signs.
  
  
• Identification and record-keeping measures to ensure that LEP patients are served properly and expeditiously.
  
  
• Documentation, data collection, monitoring, and a complaint system to assure quality and compliance with the language assistance program and to track the prevalence of various foreign languages in the patient population.
  
  

Additionally, Wyckoff has committed to developing similarly comprehensive policies and practices for serving hearing-impaired patients, consistent with those for LEP patients.

The case was handled by Assistant Attorneys General Brian J. Kreiswirth and Elisabeth C. Yap, under the direction of Deputy Bureau Chief Natalie R. Williams of the AG's Civil Rights Bureau.