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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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