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Changes in Rates and Modality of Interpreter Use for Pediatric Emergency Department Patients in the COVID-19 Era
BACKGROUND: As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, health care systems around the world have changed care delivery in significant ways. Racial and ethnic disparities have emerged for COVID-19 infection rates, morbidity, and mortality. Inequities in care and underutilization of interpretation for patien...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Joint Commission. Published by Elsevier Inc.
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8590502/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35058161 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcjq.2021.11.003 |
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author | Hartford, Emily A. Carlin, Kristen Rutman, Lori E. Lion, K. Casey |
author_facet | Hartford, Emily A. Carlin, Kristen Rutman, Lori E. Lion, K. Casey |
author_sort | Hartford, Emily A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, health care systems around the world have changed care delivery in significant ways. Racial and ethnic disparities have emerged for COVID-19 infection rates, morbidity, and mortality. Inequities in care and underutilization of interpretation for patients who use a language other than English (LOE) for care existed prior to this era. This study sought to evaluate interpreter use in a pediatric emergency department (ED) as changes associated with COVID-19 were implemented. METHODS: ED records were reviewed from December 1, 2019, to July 31, 2020. Patients were classified as having LOE if they preferred a language other than English and consented to interpretation. Statistical process control was used to analyze changes in interpreter use over time, relative to the onset of COVID-19–related operational changes. Beginning March 1, 2020, in-person interpreters were no longer available and staff were encouraged to communicate from outside the patient room when possible; this change served as the exposure of interest. Interpreter use for LOE patients, overall and by triage acuity level, was the study outcome. RESULTS: A total of 26,787 encounters were included. The weekly mean proportion of encounters that used interpretation for patients with LOE increased from 59% to 73% after the onset of COVID-19. This increase met criteria for special cause variation. Interpretation modality changed to being mostly by phone from previously by video or in-person. CONCLUSION: Operational changes in the ED related to COVID-19 were associated with increased interpreter use. Possible explanations include lower patient volumes or changes in model of care that encouraged interpreter use by a variety of modalities. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8590502 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | The Joint Commission. Published by Elsevier Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-85905022021-11-15 Changes in Rates and Modality of Interpreter Use for Pediatric Emergency Department Patients in the COVID-19 Era Hartford, Emily A. Carlin, Kristen Rutman, Lori E. Lion, K. Casey Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf Article BACKGROUND: As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, health care systems around the world have changed care delivery in significant ways. Racial and ethnic disparities have emerged for COVID-19 infection rates, morbidity, and mortality. Inequities in care and underutilization of interpretation for patients who use a language other than English (LOE) for care existed prior to this era. This study sought to evaluate interpreter use in a pediatric emergency department (ED) as changes associated with COVID-19 were implemented. METHODS: ED records were reviewed from December 1, 2019, to July 31, 2020. Patients were classified as having LOE if they preferred a language other than English and consented to interpretation. Statistical process control was used to analyze changes in interpreter use over time, relative to the onset of COVID-19–related operational changes. Beginning March 1, 2020, in-person interpreters were no longer available and staff were encouraged to communicate from outside the patient room when possible; this change served as the exposure of interest. Interpreter use for LOE patients, overall and by triage acuity level, was the study outcome. RESULTS: A total of 26,787 encounters were included. The weekly mean proportion of encounters that used interpretation for patients with LOE increased from 59% to 73% after the onset of COVID-19. This increase met criteria for special cause variation. Interpretation modality changed to being mostly by phone from previously by video or in-person. CONCLUSION: Operational changes in the ED related to COVID-19 were associated with increased interpreter use. Possible explanations include lower patient volumes or changes in model of care that encouraged interpreter use by a variety of modalities. The Joint Commission. Published by Elsevier Inc. 2022-03 2021-11-13 /pmc/articles/PMC8590502/ /pubmed/35058161 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcjq.2021.11.003 Text en © 2021 The Joint Commission. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Hartford, Emily A. Carlin, Kristen Rutman, Lori E. Lion, K. Casey Changes in Rates and Modality of Interpreter Use for Pediatric Emergency Department Patients in the COVID-19 Era |
title | Changes in Rates and Modality of Interpreter Use for Pediatric Emergency Department Patients in the COVID-19 Era |
title_full | Changes in Rates and Modality of Interpreter Use for Pediatric Emergency Department Patients in the COVID-19 Era |
title_fullStr | Changes in Rates and Modality of Interpreter Use for Pediatric Emergency Department Patients in the COVID-19 Era |
title_full_unstemmed | Changes in Rates and Modality of Interpreter Use for Pediatric Emergency Department Patients in the COVID-19 Era |
title_short | Changes in Rates and Modality of Interpreter Use for Pediatric Emergency Department Patients in the COVID-19 Era |
title_sort | changes in rates and modality of interpreter use for pediatric emergency department patients in the covid-19 era |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8590502/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35058161 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcjq.2021.11.003 |
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