30 | Shady Grove Adventist Hospital
Language Preference and Interpreter Services Figure 11 shows the distribution of patients by preferred language at SGAH in 2012, reflecting all patient encounters. English was the most preferred language among patients (90%), similar to what was reported in last year’s report. The percentage of patients who preferred to communicate in Spanish increased slightly, from 4 percent in 2011 to 5 percent in 2012. The other preferred languages at SGAH include Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese), Korean, French, and Farsi. Just over two percent of SGAH patients preferred to communicate in these languages. FIGURE 11. ALL PATIENT ENCOUNTERS BY PREFERRED LANGUAGE, SGAH, 2012 (N=164,049) Spanish 5.0%
Russian 0.1%
Unknown 4.0% English 88.7%
Other 2.4%
All Others 1.0%
Farsi 0.2%
French 0.2% Korean 0.3%
Chinese 0.6%
Figure 12 shows the languages most frequently requested for interpretation by phone at SGAH. More than 12,000 calls were placed, exceeding 113,000 minutes. As seen in Figure 12, the majority of the calls were for Spanish language interpretation, followed by Mandarin, Korean, and Russian. In addition to the languages highlighted below, calls were placed for more than 70 additional languages, including Arabic, Bengali, and Hindi (All Others, 5.9%). FIGURE 12. OVER-THE-PHONE INTERPRETER USE BY NUMBER OF CALLS, SGAH, 2012 Mandarin 8.5% Korean 4.4% Russian 4.2%
Spanish 68.5%
Other 14.4%
Farsi 1.9%
All Others 5.9%
Vietnamese 2.0% Cantonese 2.3%
French 2.3%