Multilingual competencies among ambulatory care providers in three German Federal States

BACKGROUND: Providing medical care to newly arrived migrants presents multiple challenges. A major challenge is a lack of a common language in the absence of language interpretation services. We examine the multilingualism of German physicians and clinical psychotherapists providing ambulatory care. METHODS: We retrieved publicly available data from the Associations of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians provider registry of three German federal states (Lower Saxony, Saarland, Bavaria). We selected and grouped relevant practice-based disciplines. We used descriptive statistics to analyze the provider’s multilingualism among different disciplines. RESULTS: 69.6% of ambulatory providers offer consultations only in German. 15.5% of providers reported offering consultations in one additional non-German language, and 14.9% in two or more additional languages. Most common additional languages were English (28.6%) and French (9.9%). 1.4% of providers reported offering consultation in at least one language of the Middle Eastern region (Arabic, Dari, Hebrew, Kurdish, Pashtu, Farsi, and Turkish). There were differences in the offered languages between the medical disciplines with the highest mean rates found for gynecologists and obstetricians, urologists, and general surgeons. Psychotherapeutic disciplines offered consultation in other languages significantly less often. CONCLUSION: Our study suggests a significant numeric mismatch in the number of providers offering consultations in the languages of people seeking protection in Germany. The resulting language barriers are compromising equitable access and quality of care. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12875-022-01926-1.