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GOVERNMENT & MEDICINEPennsylvania hospitals agree to provide sign language interpretersSettlements are similar to earlier pacts in Maine and Utah and could have implications for physicians.By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. Sept. 15, 2003. Physician practices should have a plan in place for providing sign language interpretation if a hearing-impaired patient comes in for care. That's the message of recent settlement agreements reached by two Pennsylvania hospitals. Although the court cases involve hospitals, the same rules could just as easily apply to physician offices that accept payment from government programs, said Gerard K. Schrom, the Media, Pa., attorney who represented the woman who filed the lawsuits. In the settlements, Chester County Hospital in West Chester, Pa., and York Hospital in York, Pa., agreed to make adequate interpreter services available in a timely fashion for patients who are deaf or hearing impaired. Other terms of the agreements were not disclosed. The cases were handled in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania and the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The changes stem from lawsuits that Beverly Ann Smanyk filed on behalf of herself and her now-deceased father, Washington B. Fry Sr. She charged that they weren't offered adequate interpreter services when Fry went to the hospitals on separate occasions in 2000 to be treated for congestive heart failure and a stroke. Both father and daughter are deaf, and sound amplifications don't help them communicate. But both are fluent in American sign language. Court records show that Smanyk said the hospitals didn't fulfill numerous requests for sign language interpreter services that would have allowed her and her father to better communicate with the hospital staff and better make decisions regarding her father's health care. [...]Full text of AMNews content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2003 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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