Minorities Criticize Cambridge Hospital For Problems With Bilingual Services

A woman needing a gynecologist enters Cambridge Hospital. She does not speak English, and no interpreters are available. The hospital has to ask her young child to explain the medical problem to his mother.

Because of problems like that, a coalition of groups representing Cambridge's linguistic minorities is pressuring the City Council to improve interpreting services at the Cambridge Hospital.

From January through June, the hospital had three interpreters handling more than 5000 calls for language assistance, a report by the Cambridge Community Development Department said.

And the community development department--which has already reported once on the hospital's problems serving Hispanics, Portuguese and Haitians--will complete another such report within a few months.

Vellucci Committee

Councilor Alfred E. Vellucci, chairman of the council's sub-committee on health and hospitals, has a task force to investigate the shortage of interpreters.

Representatives of the minority organizations began petitioning the council for more interpreters in 1977. Shortly afterward, three interpreters were hired by the city, but only for a year.

"Band-Aid" Treatment

These appointments were a "band-aid at best, but a very poor band-aid," Victor Docouto, executive director of the Cambridge Organization of Portuguese-Americans (COPA), said. But they did show how much the services needed improvement, he added.

Decouto said some minorities receive inadequate medical care at Cambridge Hospital because they cannot understand the hospital staff. Such problems make it hard for the hospital to get a patient's informed consent before providing certain treatments.

Last fall Docouto called together members of Hispanic, Haitian, Portuguese, health and women's organizations to press for more interpreters. The Coalition for Interpreters Now has held discussions on the shortage and on September 8 presented its grievances to the City Council.

Coalition members say that the city has a duty to provide round-the-clock interpreters for the approximately 23,000 Cambridge residents who speak English as a second language.

"We think this is a necessity, not a frill in somebody's budget," said Elizabeth Levy, a member of the Massachusetts Health Care Coalition. But Docouto said, "It all comes down to money."

Round-the-Clock

Docouto's ideal--three round-the-clock interpreters for Portuguese, Haitians and Hispanics--would cost considerably more than the three interpreters now working from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The council is reluctant to agree to hire more interpreters until the budget-cutting Proposition 2 1/2 is voted on in November. If the proposition passes "that will spell the death knell for human services in general," Docouto said.

The lack of interpreters at the hospital has forced many Haitian residents to go to Dorchester to seek Creole-speaking doctors, Julian Saintelot, a case worker at the Cambridge Haitian-American Association, said yesterday.

Levy and Docouto may take legal action if interpreting services do not improve. Citing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Levy said, "Linguistic minorities are being denied equal access to health care."