Patient Satisfaction With Language-Concordant Provider Encounters: A Community-Based Cross-Sectional Survey of Spanish-Speaking Adults.

backgroundHispanic communities in the United States face high rates of chronic disease yet continue to encounter barriers to linguistically concordant care, particularly in underserved regions such as San Bernardino County, California. While professional interpreters improve access, direct provider-patient communication in the patient's preferred language may yield greater trust, comfort, and satisfaction.

objectiveTo assess Spanish-speaking patients' perceptions of clinical encounters conducted directly in Spanish by their healthcare providers and to compare these experiences to prior interpreter-mediated visits.

methodsA cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among Spanish-speaking adults in San Bernardino County who had recently received language-concordant care and had prior experience with interpreter services. Participants were recruited from community centers in Redlands, Colton, and Rialto. A 5-item Likert-scale survey (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) assessed comfort, understanding, emotional support (concerns addressed), trust, and overall satisfaction. Descriptive statistics were calculated.

resultsFifty participants completed the survey. Mean (standard deviation, or SD) agreement scores for statements comparing encounters with Spanish-speaking providers to participants' prior interpreter-mediated visits were comfort with provider, 4.68 (0.51); understanding of medical information, 4.64 (0.48); feeling that concerns were addressed (emotional support), 4.50 (0.61); trust in provider, 4.64 (0.56); and overall satisfaction, 4.62 (0.57). Responses clustered at the upper end of the 5-point scale (agree/strongly agree). Comfort had the highest mean score, and the relatively small SDs indicate limited dispersion and consistency across respondents.

conclusionsLanguage-concordant care with Spanish-speaking providers was associated with consistently high patient satisfaction across relational and communication domains. These findings support expanding access to bilingual providers and integrating medical Spanish training into healthcare education as strategies to improve trust, comprehension, and engagement in Hispanic communities.