Researchers examined the websites of the 93 licensed hospitals in Washington. Lead study author and associate professor at Seattle-based Washington State University College of Nursing said her team focused on websites because it is the place patients go to seek out various healthcare information, including procedure options and financial assistance.
Around 20 percent of the 93 hospitals listed language services on the homepage of their websites. In many of these instances, the language information was described in English. Ten hospitals offer translated versions of their websites, with the most common languages being Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Russian. No hospital websites offered the translate information into Chinese.
Of the hospitals with translation services, many were large hospitals with higher revenue. The study authors, however, determined that there was no significant association between the size of the county’s limited English proficient population and if the hospital had language options on its website.
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