Twenty-nine percent of hospitals offer access to their respective patient portals only in English, leaving many patients struggling with language barriers, a recent Ann Arbor-based University of Michigan study found.
The study, published Oct. 16 in JAMA Network Open, analyzed the websites of 511 hospitals in 17 states. The hospitals were located in areas where Census data showed at least 300,000 residents had limited English proficiency. Researchers then looked at the language accessibility of the patient portal login pages.
They found 60% of hospitals offered patient portals in English and Spanish, and 11% offered English, Spanish and another language. Less than 5% of hospitals offered their patient portals in the most common language spoken in their area besides English or Spanish.
Limited language access in portals can create unintended barriers to healthcare access to more than 25 million patients with limited English proficiency.
“Our findings highlight that there is a need, even if the fix isn’t simple,” Debbie Chen, MD, team lead at the University of Michigan Medical School, said in an Oct. 16 system news release. “The number of people in this country who have limited English proficiency is growing. For many hospitals, patient portals are an important tool through which physicians provide care between appointments, so it is important that we make the portal accessible to all patients.”
