Saerom Yoo

Statesman Journal

Update:Oregon Association of the Deaf president Chad Ludwig tells the Statesman Journal that he has set a meeting with Salem Hospital to discuss its interpretive services program on Aug. 27.

Ludwig wrote in an email that he hopes to help "lead them the way" in addressing the concerns expressed by Salem's deaf community.

The hospital did not immediately return an email seeking details.

RELATED:Access to interpreter a civil right of the deaf

Original story:

Liz Davis knew something was different with Salem Hospital's interpretive services when she recently took her deaf husband, Peter, to the emergency department and the American Sign Language interpreter who arrived three or four hours later could not understand him.

"She got frustrated and looked at me like she didn't understand," Liz Davis said.

Another recent time she accompanied Peter Davis to the emergency department, she said, the staff refused to call for a live interpreter, and told her that the hospital no longer offered those services. Each time, the hospital brought out a video relay interpreter, which works like a video chat service, even though the patient had a difficult time communicating via that method.

During both visits Liz Davis ended up interpreting for her husband, which according to advocates violated his rights to an impartial and qualified interpreter. She later looked up the first live interpreter in a national database of certified interpreters, and found that she was not certified.

For years the Davises had no complaints about the interpretive services they received at the hospital. Previously interpreters responded as quickly as within 20 minutes and had no problems understanding Peter. So she called the Salem company, Anderson Interpretive Services, to ask what was going on.

"That's when she told me her contract had been cut," Davis said of the service's owner, Cynthia Anderson.

In May, Salem Hospital ended its decades-long relationship with Anderson Interpretive Services, which specializes in sign language. Now, three firms, which provide interpretive services for spoken language and ASL, are filling the gap. But the transition has been rough for the deaf community, which has complained to the Statesman Journal about the hospital staff and its interpreters. The complaints allege that staff and interpreters are slow to respond, unprofessional, under-qualified and unethical.

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Since then, Salem Hospital has vowed to address the problems with its emergency room staff and its vendors about proper expectations and treatment of the deaf community.

Inappropriate and illegal

Salem Health's David Barlow, who oversees the hospital's language services, declined to explain why it ended its contract with Anderson. But he touted the company's quality of services.

Cynthia Anderson, the owner, said she was told the change was purely a business decision. She said that in the past two years, her company's services cost the hospital about $120,000 annually.

Many of the complaints from the deaf community have been about the hospital's failure to provide in-person interpreters either in a timely fashion or at all. Anderson said that was not a problem she dealt with.

"In the last 15 years, there was not one time we couldn't provide an interpreter," Anderson said. "Our average response time was 17.8 minutes. That's 24/7, snow days and holidays. We always had one."

Neither the hospital nor the deaf community have disputed Anderson's statements.

A few weeks ago, Shadow Joseph took his deaf girlfriend, Jacqueline Bair, to the emergency department for severe neck and back pain, Joseph said.

When the hospital brought out a video interpreting device, she requested an on-site interpreter. The staff told her that would take two to four hours. Bair waited.

But four hours later, the hospital staff told her an interpreter was not available. Joseph was brought in from the waiting room to interpret. After her visit was over, doctors asked him to interpret for two more deaf patients who were complete strangers to him.

Joseph is competent in ASL, and has extensive experience in communicating with the deaf. But he is not certified or trained in federal patient privacy laws. He was not paid for his help in the hospital, Joseph said, but staff did ask for his phone number. He declined to give it to them.

Bair said through Joseph that her previous experiences in the hospital had been "perfect," with interpreters arriving in about 15 minutes.

When asked about Joseph's experience, Barlow admitted it was inappropriate for Joseph to interpret for Bair, and illegal for the hospital to request him to interpret for other patients.

"I can hear clearly that we have a need to improve," Barlow said. "I don't doubt that for a moment from what you've been hearing. It's very disappointing."

Avoiding the hospital

The three vendors Salem Hospital uses for interpretive services are Linguava, Passport to Languages and Telelanguage, all of which are based in Portland.

All the firms offer interpretive services in many languages, including ASL.

C.M. Hall, an instructor of deaf-blind interpreting at Western Oregon University, said the firms that offer many languages typically don't have good quality ASL interpreters. She herself has experienced foreign language companies finding her on the national registry and offering her a contract, without screening her first.

"Foreign language agencies are notorious for poor reputations in hiring of ASL interpreters," Hall said. "They don't know how to screen because they don't know the language. The outcome is deaf people receive poor and low-quality services."

Barlow said the hospital requires its vendors to only send certified interpreters, but that it wouldn't necessarily know if that policy had been violated.

David Brackett, president of Linguava, said "We send certified interpreters whenever possible as a first resort."

Brackett said he had been in discussions with Salem Hospital about the recent complaints, and that he will work to hire more ASL interpreters to ease the problems.

The Telelanguage and Passport to Languages did not respond to requests for comment.

The problems have occurred outside of the emergency department, also. Keizer woman Amber Slape said that she has moved her physical therapy case to another local clinic because she has had a negative experience with an interpreter in May. Her interview with the Statesman Journal was conducted through an interpreter.

She contacted the hospital's patient advocacy department to complain about the lack of professionalism the interpreter displayed, and requested Anderson Interpretive Services. In a response letter, the hospital wrote that Slape's concerns were being addressed but that it no longer had a contract with Anderson and it could not guarantee a particular interpreter.

DOCUMENT:Salem Hospital letter on sign language services

Slape is avoiding future issues by going to other local clinics, most of which contract with Anderson Interpretive Services. But she's concerned about potential emergencies in which she might not have a choice.

"I'm making a conscious decision not to go to Salem Hospital and I'm going to Salem Clinic's Urgent Care instead," Slape said.

Hospital spokeswoman Sherryll Hoar said while it is working to address the complaints of the deaf community, patients should bring problems directly to the hospital's patient advocacy department.

"If something's not going in the patient's satisfaction, they should talk to a patient advocate and get the situation resolved," Hoar said. "It's important that we provide effective communication no matter who walks in the door. If there's a problem we need to address, we need to address it."

syoo@StatesmanJournal.com, (503) 399-6673 or follow at Twitter.com/syoo.