Interpreter Services

St. Elizabeth's Medical Center

St. Elizabeth's Medical Center is committed to providing linguistically and culturally appropriate services to our patients and families through our experienced team of trained medical interpreters.

In the medical setting, it is essential that patients actively participate in a dialogue with their healthcare providers. The need to understand information, diagnoses, and directions accurately is crucial before making medical decisions that affect one's own treatment or that of a loved one.

While many of our patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) and their families use English in other settings, it may not be the language they prefer to use for medical care. In addition, feelings of anxiousness or fear about a diagnosis or illness can affect communication. This often happens in emergency situations when a person may be too nervous to communicate clearly in anything other than his/her primary language. Interpreter services bridges linguistic and cultural gaps that may exist between a patient and the medical provider while maintaining strict patient confidentiality.

Interpreters are available 24 hours per day.

How to Reach an Interpreter

St. Elizabeth's Medical Center's team of healthcare providers and support staff work closely with interpreter services to ensure that our medical interpreters are prepared to support your care. In the event that you need to reschedule your appointment or have questions related to ongoing care, contact interpreter services or your provider's direct number to discuss your situation. Contact information for our department is listed below.

Please Note: In emergency or short-notice situations when an in-person interpreter is not immediately available for a specific language, we may use telephonic and/or video remote interpretation. St. Elizabeth's Medical Center has invested in the latest communications technology in order to ensure that our LEP patients always receive an equivalent standard of care compared to non-LEP patients. Our services include customized wireless conference phones and dual-handset phones stationed at key hospital departments with access to both staff and outside Interpreters in 200 languages and dialects. We offer video remote interpreting supported with a computer and webcam when assisting deaf patients through American Sign Language (ASL) to supplement in-person ASL Interpreters requested from the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (MCDHH). We also support video remote interpretation for a number of our most frequently requested languages.