Dora had success
I got an email from my friend, Dora. She moved to Germantown (the Philadelphia neighborhood where I live) from an outlying area, so changed doctors to be closer to home. She’s younger than I am, and doesn’t have the same hangups about phoning, so she called around.
She called a place in Germantown (I’ll have to get the name from her) and they told her that they have experience with deaf patients and asked if she needed an interpreter for the appointment. This is the way it’s supposed to be! A medical office gets a call from a deaf patient and asks if they need an interpreter, not the rigamarole I normally get where the receptionist tells me they don’t provide interpreters.
But when I was looking for Betty’s new doctor, nothing came up in Germantown, so they must not accept Keystone 65 insurance.
zombie z said,
January 14, 2008 at 9:49 pm
That is great. I’m not sure about personal doctors, but I know that most hospitals provide interpretors for “foreign languages” such as Spanish, etc…But not Sign.
As a hearing person, I am doing my best to dispel ignorance among other hearing people by spreading the fact that ASL is a “real” language and the Deaf community has a valid culture separate from any other.
purpleswirl said,
January 16, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Thank you, zombie z! I didn’t know that most hospitals provide interpreters for spoken foreign languages. When I did searches on ibx.com and revolutionhealth.com for personal doctors, one of the options for the searches was languages used. So, it’s possible to find doctors who speak other languages through the search features.
Hospitals, by law (the ADA law), must provide interpreters for deaf patients. Well, no, the ADA is open to “interpretation” itself, it says the hospital must provide reasonable accommodations. The hospitals and doctors have the right to decide what is reasonable accommodation, though, and I’m sure they often think of “money” not “patients needs access.” But they often get sued, too, when things go wrong and they didn’t listen to the patient’s requests for interpreters.
Thanks for your advocacy about sign language and the Deaf community. We need folks like you to keep spreading the message.
– Nancy C.
Sheila said,
February 7, 2008 at 6:32 pm
One correction, Nancy, reasonable accommodations are used in employment setting. Auxiliary aids is the term you need for Title III Places of public accommodation. Otherwise your posting is correct.
Here in CA, hospitals do provide interpreters for foreign language speaking patients too.
Sheila