Imagine if you couldn’t communicate with your primary care provider? What would it be like if you couldn’t explain to the nurse health concerns for you, or your child? Or be able to speak with your pharmacist about the side effects from the new medication you started taking?
At Charles River Community Health, 73% of our patients receive care in a language other than English, the third highest rate of all health centers in Massachusetts. We have many multi lingual staff that provide interpreting services during appointments when there is a language barrier between provider and patient. Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Vietnamese and Chinese are spoken in exam rooms every day in our Waltham and Brighton locations. Sometimes, however, we must turn to telephonic interpretation services to communicate with patients who need care in a language we don’t have on staff, or when our staff are busy serving another patient. This is not only a matter of providing linguistically appropriate care, but also health equity, to ensure our patients of all backgrounds have equitable opportunity to participate in discussions and decisions around their health.
Each month we spend an average of $28,000 for phone-based interpreting services to help our patients speak with our providers in their preferred language, so they can get the care they need. These costs are not covered by insurance and we never ask a patient to cover this expense. We rely on our generous supporters, like you, to help offset the cost of these critical services. Please help us on this Giving Tuesday with a gift to help us cover the cost of providing linguistically appropriate and equitable care to patients.
Click Here to Make a Gift Now.
At Charles River Community Health, we provide care for every patient who seeks it, regardless of their ability to pay or what language they speak. Like you, we believe that access to health care is a right, not a privilege.
Thank you for your support of our work.
