Millions of Calif. patients now have right to interpreter

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Millions of Californians with limited English proficiency now have the right to an interpreter from their medical and dental plans -- made possible by a first-in-the-nation law aimed at dismantling the language barriers that get in the way of good medicine.
The new regulation -- implemented New Year's Day after five years of hearings, delays and wrangling among insurance companies, regulators and consumer advocates -- is widely hailed as a milestone in reducing mistakes because of miscommunication.
"This is really huge, especially in California where we're getting more and more diverse," said Martin Martinez, policy director for the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network. "Even if you speak English well, it's really hard to understand what your doctor is saying."
As many as 7 million Californians, about half of them enrolled in health maintenance organizations, or HMOs, lack English fluency and could benefit from the new language service.
More than 40 percent of the state's 37 million residents speak a language other than English, according to U.S. census estimates. A fifth of the population say they do not speak English "very well."
Patients' rights advocates applaud the new rules but fear non-English speakers won't be told about the help now available to them. To spread the word, the state is launching a publicity drive in the coming weeks.
"This law has been some time coming," said Anthony Wright, executive director of California Health Access. "Our big concern now is whether people have adequate notice about their rights and can actually use them."
Doctors' orders will now have to be translated, at least orally, into Spanish, Mandarin, Hmong, Russian -- any spoken language.
The scope and cost of the task, estimated by insurers to be about $25 million, make it the biggest regulation effort undertaken by the California Department of Managed Health Care, which oversees HMOs.
The law, Senate Bill 853, was signed in 2003 but shelved as part of a moratorium imposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he took office. It was finally dusted off, but insurers balked at the cost.
"Obviously, we know this is a diverse state and people speak many different languages," said Nicole Kasabian Evans, spokeswoman for the California Association of Health Plans. The insurers' concern, she said, was about balancing access and affordability. Some insurers plan to contract out the language services.
Some of the building blocks were already in place because federal law requires health plans to offer interpreters to those enrolled in Medi-Cal or Healthy Families.
California's law is broad in its sweep. It requires health, dental and specialty insurers to provide subscribers with translators, at least by telephone, while visiting their doctor, pharmacist, ophthalmologist or dentist.
"The intent is that better communication leads to better health care. To the extent we can make that possible, we're going to work to do that," said Ben Singer, a spokesman for Anthem Blue Cross, which provides dental and medical insurance to 8 million Californians.
(E-mail Bobby Caina Calvan at bcalvan(at)sacbee.com)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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