Providing professional interpreter access does not raise hospital cost and can yield net savings

Opposing Claims #

CLMs this claim opposes (→ CLM—opposes→CLM by sync_relations.py).

• C-0003ClaimC-0003Initial AI draftFor most large HDNs, the cumulative costs of language discordance adds up to 10s of millions of dollars of wasted provider time a year

Narrative synthesis #

This is the intervention-contrast cost claim: providing or improving access to professional interpreters does not measurably increase hospital cost, and convenient access can be cost-saving on net. The two lines of evidence are complementary in direction. Morris (2021) is a null result on the marginal cost question — after casemix adjustment, LEP patients who received an interpreter did not cost significantly more than those who needed but did not receive one (additional AU$336, P = .85; AU$874 multivariate, P = .64), so equipping patients with interpreters does not inflate per-episode cost. Karliner (2017) is a modeled savings estimate — by lowering the LEP readmission rate (17.8% → 13.4%), a convenient bedside-phone intervention projected roughly $161,404/month in net hospital savings after subtracting interpreter-call costs.

Both estimates carry caveats the human should weigh: Morris allocates interpreter costs as an equal overhead across all patients and so cannot isolate the marginal cost of an interpreter, and Karliner explicitly did not conduct a formal cost study (the figure is a model that assumes the readmission drop is attributable to the intervention). This claim is wired as opposing the discordance-wastes-millions claim because the two sit in direct tension on whether language services are a cost burden vs a cost-neutral-to-saving investment; surfacing that tension lets an expert adjudicate rather than hiding it.