Breaking Language Barriers in Healthcare

Overview

Equity Begins With Understanding

Patients rely on discharge instructions to manage medications, schedule follow-up appointments, and recognize warning signs once they return home. Providing that information in the patient’s preferred language helps patients and families understand what comes next. Commence and The Language Group developed Fetch, which brings human-reviewed translation into Sentara Health’s existing Epic workflow.

Problem

Translated Instructions Needed to Keep Pace With Discharge

At Sentara Health, care teams needed translated instructions soon enough to use them during discharge. When translation depended on the availability of qualified internal staff or outside services, requests could add waiting time and manual coordination for staff preparing patients to leave. Sentara needed timely access to complete, human-reviewed instructions through its existing clinical workflow.

Solution

Human-Reviewed Translation Through Epic

Commence and The Language Group developed Fetch to bring complete after-visit summary translation into clinical workflows. At Sentara, staff request and receive translations through Epic with only an additional click or two. Fetch covers standard discharge instructions and patient-specific content entered by clinicians. Qualified medical linguists review every translated document, with translation and human review available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. HIPAA-compliant cloud architecture with U.S.-based hosting protects patient information, and built-in human review supports Section 1557 requirements for critical machine-translated content.

Impact

Results Across 39 Locations

Sentara uses Fetch across its hospitals and outpatient clinics. Monthly translation request volume nearly doubled over a six-month reporting period. Care teams use Fetch to:

• Request translated instructions directly within Epic with only an additional click or two
• Receive complete after-visit summaries reviewed by qualified medical linguists
• Protect patient information throughout translation with HIPAA-compliant cloud architecture and U.S.-based hosting
• Provide bilingual instructions patients can take home and refer to during recovery