Interpreter Use and Patient Satisfaction in the Otolaryngology Outpatient Clinic

Background Communication between providers and patients is essential to patient care and to the patient-physician relationship. It plays a significant role in both measurable and perceived quality of care. This study explores the satisfaction of English-speaking and limited English proficiency (LEP) patients with English-speaking providers, focusing on the correlation between patients' primary language and the use of interpreter services on patients' visit satisfaction. Methodology This study was designed to have a sample size sufficient to detect a 10% difference in the primary outcome, overall visit satisfaction, between language-concordant patients and LEP patients in the interpreter and no interpreter groups, assuming a two-tailed alpha of 0.05 and power of 80%. All collected data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software, version 25 (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY, USA), and significance was determined if p <0.05. Results Of the total 209 patients, 65 utilized professional interpreter services, nine used an ad-hoc interpreter, and 135 did not require an interpreter. Patients who used an interpreter demonstrated lower visit satisfaction compared with patients who did not (p < 0.001). Patients expressed significantly greater preference for in-person interpreter (mean = 9.73) or a family member (mean = 9.44) compared to telephone services (mean = 8.50) (p = 0.002). The overall satisfaction scores did not significantly differ between different interpreter types (p = 0.157). Conclusions LEP patients experienced lower visit satisfaction compared to language-concordant patients. The data suggest that perceived quality of communication was a factor in these lower satisfaction reports. While LEP patients did prefer in-person interpreters, there was no significant difference in overall visit satisfaction between different types of interpreters.