Study Shows How Language-Concordant Care Impacts Health Outcomes
Patients with medical providers who speak the same language have better outcomes, according to a study published on July 11 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
The findings of the study indicate that patients who speak languages other than English are up to 54% less likely to die or experience other severe health outcomes when treated by a physician who speaks their language.
To conduct the study, researchers from the University of Ottawa examined data from nearly 190,000 adult home care residents who visited a hospital from 2010 to 2018 and compared the language listed on those records with the primary physician who treated them.
The findings show that patients who received most of their care from physicians who spoke the patients’ primary language had better in-hospital outcomes. This suggests that disparities across linguistic groups can be mitigated by providing patients with language-concordant care.
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