Interpreter Services Offer and Response

You are entitled to a qualified interpreter, at no cost to you, for your appointments and for the conversations in which treatment is explained and consent is given. This is true whether or not a family member or friend is able to interpret for you, and asking for one will never delay urgent care or change how you are treated.

Interpreting can be arranged in person, by telephone, or by video.

Consent is only informed if it was given in a language you actually understand. Where a patient prefers to use a family member or friend rather than a qualified interpreter, that choice has to be recorded in the chart — both because it is required and because it is the honest record of how the conversation happened.

A family member interpreting is not the same as a qualified interpreter: they may not know clinical vocabulary, and they may soften or omit things they find upsetting. You may change your mind and ask for a qualified interpreter at any point, including in the middle of an appointment.

Key pages of this website are published in Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Tagalog, and Vietnamese, and so are the forms in this library. Each translation has been reviewed and approved by our doctors and by a certified translator, so the form you sign says the same thing in your language as it does in English. If anything in a form is unclear, tell us and an interpreter will go through it with you before you sign anything.