Improving Healthcare for Non-English Speaking Citizens

[CDRamming]

My current venture deals with improving patient care for non-English speaking patients in the US. While many systems are currently in place very few have a high effectiveness rate. I am planning to utilize medically certified translators to communicate to emergency personnel via video conferencing equipment to assist in the care given to victims/patients. The population of people who are linguistically isolated from the English speaking population stood at 11.9 million according to the 2000 census. The implementation of this system will not only provide adequate patient care but also reduce the cost of insurance and malpractice suits faced by all caretakers involved. I am currently working on my business plan and finishing a presentation that I will be proposing to a hopeful partner who was the VP of Corporate Labor Relations and Chief Legal Officer of AB until last year.

Im also trying to work on naming of the Company. I was planning to go with Inter-Connect Solutions, but there are hundreds of places that follow this naming that deal with internet connection solutions. I was also considering Language Connection Network. If anyone has ideas I'm open to them

[willrobinsoniii]

This is an interesting idea. My wife is bilingual, works in a hospital and is often pulled a into patient's room to help translate. Very much a needed service. February's ideablob.com winner had an idea to connect people in developing countries to physicians in the United States using technology. I'm not sure how he's doing it, but you should check it out. He has an interesting name: Mashavu, which means "chubby cheeked" in Swahili.

[CDRamming]

While bilingual nurses, doctors, and other hospital workers are often utilized there are many medical terms that cannot be translated through a standard vocabulary. There is actually a certification program that teaches proper medical language to bilingual individuals and the method of interpreting for the person as opposed to a 3rd party. (My arm hurts; as opposed to the patient says his arm hurts. I wrote a research paper on the problems that occur with ad-hoc or chance interpreters and while the satisfaction of the patient was nearly identical with that of a certified medical interpreter, the certified individual provided a much more accurate interpretation for both the patient and attending physician. It is very helpful that your wife is able to do that for the hospital but also make sure she is careful because she and the hospital can be held liable if her interpretation causes the doctor to perform an improper procedure.

[jmasters1691]

Good point. Interesting idea. Do you have personal experience with language barrier issues and patients?

[CDRamming]

Somewhat, I conceived the idea when my girlfriends mother who is the office manager of her fathers practice was complaining that it was difficult to find a Korean interpreter. The family members were not able to speak English well enough to communicate the doctors questions to the patient. I thought of ways to more effectively provide this service to doctors and while services exist currently, I am advancing the service further to cover a greater number of patients in different situations/areas.