Only 3.4% of LEP surgical inpatients had an interpreter documented at discharge

Description #

Only 4 of the 117 LEP surgical patients (3.4%) had a professional interpreter use documented at discharge (Table 2) — far lower than the 88.0% ever-use and 53.0% first-24-hour rates, indicating that the discharge encounter is a particular gap in documented language-concordant communication.

"with 62 (53.0%) showing interpreter use within the first 24 hours and 4 (3.4%) at discharge." (Cevallos, 2024, p. 1)

"Interpreter use / At discharge / 4 (3.4) / NA" (Cevallos, 2024, p. 2, Table 2)

Methods Context #

What? #ⓘ

The observable: whether a professional interpreter use was documented in the EHR at the discharge encounter.

"The primary outcomes included documentation of interpreter usage within the first 24 hours of hospital encounter, interpreter usage at discharge, interpreter usage ever during this admission, and the provision of language-concordant discharge forms." (Cevallos, 2024, p. 1)

How? #ⓘ

Retrospective EHR-based cohort study; discharge interpreter documentation was extracted from the medical record (in-person and telehealth counted identically).

"Of note, interpreter documentation includes both in-person and telehealth, which are documented identically." (Cevallos, 2024, p. 1)

Who? #ⓘ

117 LEP patients aged ≥18 admitted for appendectomy, cholecystectomy, or colectomy at a single urban academic center, 2019–2020.

"Of the 130 patients with LEP, the analytical cohort included 117 patients (74 female [63.3%]; mean [SD] age, 64 [17.3] years)." (Cevallos, 2024, p. 1)

Caveats #

• EHR documentation likely undercounts actual interpreter use (Cevallos 2024) Because the interpreter-use measures are derived from EHR documentation in an observational study, they capture only documented interpreter use, which the authors expect to undercount actual use. The low documented rates (88% ever, median 1 use, 53% first-24-hour, 3.4% at discharge) may therefore overstate true underutilization: real interpreter usage likely exceeds what the record shows. This is why the authors argue that language-concordant discharge forms — which exist in the EHR only when actually provided — are a more reliable metric of deficiency than interpreter documentation.