ArticleJournal of general internal medicine2025
Monitoring Use of Language Interpreting Services for Patients with Limited English Proficiency: Methods to Match Patient Medical Records with Interpreter Billing Logs.
Article in Journal of general internal medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Paediatrician perspectives and experiences accessing language interpretation services in Paediatric healthcare settings: a POPCORN network qualitative descriptive study.Paediatrics & child health · 2026Article
- Language Preference and Antibiotic Use Among Hospitalized Older Adults With Dementia.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2026Article
- Research on Patients with Non-English Language Preference: More of the Same.Journal of general internal medicine · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOver 60 million patients in the USA have limited English proficiency (LEP) and experience barriers in care. Still, there exists no standardized method of monitoring the utilization of language interpreting services (LIS).
objectiveTo introduce a methodological approach to systematically monitor utilization of LIS for LEP patients.
designWe utilized a One-To-Many Match algorithm to align inpatient visits of LEP patients from the electronic health record (EHR) with corresponding calls from LIS billing logs, using a unique patient identifier (MRN) and LIS call dates within patient's admit and discharge dates. Due to error when MRNs are recorded by LIS, the FuzzyWuzzy Probabilistic String-Matching technique was utilized to enhance match accuracy where exact matches were unattainable, addressing inherent complexities in language data matching.
participantsThe study involved 5823 inpatient encounters with a non-English preference in an urban hospital system in 2020, representing a linguistically diverse patient base, and attempted to match these against 183,655 LIS call logs. MAIN MEASURES: Our approach successfully matched 83.1% (4389 out of 5823) of inpatient encounters to an LIS call. KEY
resultsWe observed significant language-specific disparities in LIS usage, with Spanish leading in call volume at 2737 calls (exact matches) and 845 (probabilistic matches). Concordance rates varied, exceeding 94% for all languages in exact matches and ranging from 53.9% for Arabic to 71.6% for Russian in probabilistic matches. The average frequency of LIS calls was about one call per day per language group in the inpatient setting.
conclusionsThe study provides vital insights into language service preferences, frequency, and duration. These findings emphasize the need for standard methods in monitoring LIS usage to enhance patient outcomes for LEP patients.
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