Uno employee, dos jobs: Benefits of a bilingual staff

With the Hispanic population surging, physicians find that bilingual employees can meet federal requirements for interpreters -- and help market the practice.

By Pamela Lewis Dolan, AMNews staff. Nov. 6, 2006.

When family physician David Tempest, MD, started practicing in Moncure, N.C., 17 years ago, his patients were mostly black or white, and everyone spoke English. But when poultry-processing plants started opening in the area, the demographics shifted quickly as Mexican immigrants came for jobs.

Now more than one-third of the patients Dr. Tempest sees speak only Spanish. That's why his Moncure Community Health Center in mid-October posted job openings for a physician assistant and a patient care coordinator that state: "Bilingual in Spanish preferred."

Early on, he said, the sliding-scale-fee clinic hired bilingual employees to facilitate communication between doctors and patients. "We still do that. All of our support staff is cross-trained."

A staff member fluent in a language other than English is a necessity many practices are realizing, especially if that language is Spanish. These practices don't need to look at the U.S. Census Bureau numbers -- which say the nation last year had 43 million Hispanic residents, that Hispanics will grow to 25% of the population in less than 50 years, and that the fastest growth is happening outside the usual big-city entry points -- to know they increasingly are seeing a patient population that is not English-speaking.

The Health and Human Services Dept. requires any practice participating in a federal program, such as Medicare, to provide language assistance. That doesn't mean a practice is required to hire bilingual staff, but some are finding that doing so saves time and helps deliver better care through clearer communication.