Replies to LegCo questions
LCQ21: Provision of interpretation services by Hospital Authority
Following is a question by the Hon Emily Lau Wai-hing and a written reply by the
Secretary for Food and Health, Dr Ko Wing-man, in the Legislative Council today
(February 3):
Question:
It is learnt that a representative of the Hospital Authority (HA), when
attending a public forum organised by the Equal Opportunities Commission on
November 24 last year, disclosed that ethnic minority (EM) patients normally
needed to wait for about four hours for on-site interpretation service in public
hospitals and clinics, and even in emergency situations, they still needed to
wait for about two hours. In this connection, will the executive authorities
inform this Council:
(1) whether it knows the numbers of times for which public hospitals and clinics
provided (i) on-site and (ii) telephone interpretation services for EM patients
in each of the past three years, as well as the respective average, longest and
shortest waiting times for such interpretation services;
(2) whether it knows the numbers of times for which public hospitals and clinics
provided interpretation services for EM patients through their service
contractors in each of the past three years;
(3) whether it knows if the decisions to provide interpretation services for EM
patients must be made by doctors in public hospitals and clinics;
(4) whether it knows if there were occasions in the past three years where the
diagnosis and treatment received by EM patients were affected by errors in
interpretation; if there were, of the details; and
(5) whether it has reviewed the reasonableness of the arrangement for EM
patients having to wait for about four hours for on-site interpretation service;
whether it knows the resources used by HA for providing interpretation services
in each of the past three years; whether the authorities will allocate
additional funding to HA for improving the relevant interpretation services; if
they will, of the details; if not, the reasons for that?
Reply:
President,
The Hospital Authority (HA) provides services for all members of the public
regardless of their race and ethnic origin. To cater for the needs of ethnic
minorities, interpretation services are arranged for those who are in need of
such services in public hospitals and clinics of the HA through a service
contractor, part-time court interpreters and consulate offices. The
interpretation services provided by the service contractor cover 18 ethnic
minority languages, including Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Nepali, Bahasa Indonesia,
Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Bengali, Japanese, Tagalog, German, French, Sinhala,
Spanish, Arabic, Malay and Portuguese. The HA has also formulated guidelines for
its staff on the procedures of arranging interpretation services. HA staff will
arrange on-site or telephone interpretation services according to the needs of
each case or at the request of patients.
Apart from providing interpretation services, the HA also prepares response cue
cards, disease information sheets and patient consent forms in 18 ethnic
minority languages to enhance communication between hospital staff and ethnic
minority patients in the registration process and provision of services. These
documents contain information about common diseases (e.g. headache, chest pain
and fever), treatment procedures (e.g. blood transfusion and safety issues of
radiation therapy) and details of HA's services (e.g. fees and charges and the
triage system of the accident and emergency department).
My reply to the various parts of the question raised by the Hon Emily Lau on the
interpretation services of the HA is as follows:
(1) Statistics on on-site and telephone interpretation services provided by the
HA in its public hospitals and clinics in the past three years are set out in
the table below:
Year
On-site
Telephone
Total
interpretation interpretation
(number of
(number of
(number of
cases)
cases)
cases)
2012/13
4 893
83
4 976
2013/14
5 946
71
6 017
2014/15
7 844
107
7 951
For scheduled service (such as medical appointment at general out-patient and
specialist clinics), patients may request the hospital or clinic concerned to
arrange interpretation services in advance. In such cases, interpreters were
able to arrive on time.
For non-scheduled service, such as hospital admission during emergency, hospital
staff will make immediate arrangements where necessary or at the request of
patients, so that telephone interpretation service or on-site interpretation
service can be delivered as soon as possible. The staff may also use response
cue cards, which are available in 18 ethnic minority languages, to communicate
with the patients to ensure timely provision of medical treatment.
Over the past three years, the HA provided emergency interpretation service for
1 081 times. On average, an interpreter was able to arrive within an hour to
provide interpretation for the ethnic minority service users. For urgently
arranged telephone interpretation service, the waiting time ranged from about a
few minutes to less than half an hour and the average waiting time was 21
minutes.
According to the Hon Emily Lau's question, a representative of the HA mentioned
at the forum organised by the Equal Opportunities Commission on November 24,
2015 that the time required for processing emergency and non-emergency
interpretation cases were two hours and four hours respectively. The
aforementioned time is in fact the minimum requirements specified in the
contract with interpretation service contractor as one of the considerations in
assessing the performance of the interpretation service contractor. Hence, the
figures do not represent the actual waiting time. In emergencies and before the
arrival of the interpreters, the HA will take other feasible measures, e.g.
arranging telephone interpretation service and with the assistance of response
cue cards, to provide appropriate services to patients in a timely manner
(2) Statistics on interpretation services provided by the HA through its service
contractor in the past three years are set out in the table below:
Year Interpretation services
(in number of cases)
2012/13 4 847
2013/14 5 881
2014/15 7 780
(3) For scheduled service (such as medical appointment at general out-patient
and specialist clinics), patients may request the hospital or clinic concerned
to arrange interpretation services in advance. For non-scheduled service (such
as hospital admission during emergency), hospital staff will arrange
interpretation services where necessary or at the request of patients. In such
cases, there is no need to seek prior consent or approval of a doctor.
(4) HA's records do not show any cases where a patient's health was affected by
inaccurate interpretation.
(5) To meet the growing demand for interpretation services, the HA's expenditure
on such services increased from about $1.4 million in 2011/12 to about $4.6
million in 2014/15. It is expected that the expenditure will continue to
increase in 2015/16.
To ensure the quality of interpretation services in public hospitals and
clinics, the HA provides, through its service contractor, training in
medical-related knowledge for all interpreters. Some of the training sessions
are conducted by university lecturers. Through such training, the interpreters
can have a better understanding of hospital operation, medical terminology and
infection control so that they can deliver more precise interpretation for
ethnic minority patients in medical services.
Moreover, the service contractor of the HA, in collaboration with
representatives of the Centre for Translation of the Hong Kong Baptist
University, conducts inspections in hospitals every year to monitor the service
quality of its interpreters. The HA also pays close attention to the comments
and rating given by service users so as to uphold the interpretation service
quality. The users concerned are generally very satisfied with the
interpretation services provided in hospitals and clinics according to previous
questionnaire surveys.
The HA will continue to strengthen the promotion of interpretation services to
ethnic minorities. Multilingual posters have been printed and posted in public
hospitals, and TV panels are used for promoting and helping ethnic minorities
understand how to use the interpretation services.
Apart from healthcare personnel, front-line staff such as those manning enquiry
counters, nurses and clerks in hospitals and clinics may also come into contact
with ethnic minorities. The HA organised various seminars for them to give them
a better idea of the cultural characteristics of ethnic minorities,
anti-discrimination legislation and equal opportunities. Online training is also
provided to strengthen their communication skills with ethnic minorities,
enhance their knowledge on ethnic minority cultures and improve their skills in
arranging interpretation services. These training topics are also included in
the induction course for new recruits.
Ends/Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Issued at HKT 16:04
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