Telemedicine Leaves Behind Non-English Speakers, Study Shows

People who speak limited English struggled to access telehealth services in the US during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new analysis, affecting their ability to connect with medical care. It's something experts worried about as soon as health organizations made the switch from in-person to virtual care. From a report: "That was really a concern of ours -- who is getting left out?" says Denise Payan, an assistant professor of health, society, and behavior at the University of California, Irvine, who worked on the study. Payan and her colleagues interviewed staff and patients at two community health centers in California about their experiences with telehealth between December 2020 and April 2021. One of the clinics serves a primarily Spanish-speaking population, and the second serves a primarily Chinese-speaking population. Neither had offered video or phone visits before the pandemic started. Both started to them available soon after the California stay-at-home orders in March 2020 -- first with phone calls, then with video. The researchers spoke with 15 clinic workers and nine patients. Clinic patients who spoke limited English struggled to set up and use platforms like Zoom for health visits, the researchers found. "Things like not being able to read FAQs," Payan says. "There's reliance on either clinic personnel, staff, or family members -- like kids, who are helping their parents get connected to video visits."

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