Solving The Language Access Gap with AI in Healthcare
How Commence and The Language Group’s Translation Solution is Transforming Patient Advocacy and Reducing Costs for Providers
A hospital readmission can cost more than $15,000. For patients who leave with care instructions they can’t read, it’s a risk too often overlooked. When non-English speaking patients leave a provider’s office without fully understanding their care instructions, they face preventable complications, costly readmittance, and widening health disparities. For already stretched health systems, that means not only worse health outcomes but millions of dollars in unnecessary losses.
Introducing Fetch: AI in Healthcare That Advocates for Patients
Last week, Commence and The Language Group launched Fetch, a patent-pending translation solution designed to close critical language gaps in healthcare.
Fetch integrates AI-powered translation with clinical review into real-time workflows—handling everything from protected health information (PHI) redaction to multilingual discharge instructions before the patient leaves the room.
The Cost of Misunderstanding
One large integrated health system serving 150-200 limited-English proficient (LEP) patients daily estimated a 14% readmittance rate among patients discharged without translated instructions at an average cost of $15,200 per readmittance. That’s more than $4.6 million in preventable costs annually.
These aren’t exceptions. They’re everyday examples of how language access directly impacts outcomes, experience, and efficiency.
Our solution delivers:
- Patent-pending AI-powered translation with human review
- Epic-integration with full Showroom approval
- Real-time delivery of multilingual care instructions in minutes
- Unified dashboards to track compliance, utilization, and costs
- Built-in compliance with Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, Title VI, CLAS, Joint Commission, HIPAA, and ISO 18587
By embedding translation into discharge workflows, Fetch helps hospitals eliminate delays, reduce risk, and meet the highest standards of patient safety.
Driving Value-Based Care Through Patient Advocacy
Healthcare leaders know that value-based care depends on infrastructure as much as intent.
Commence helps providers turn language access into:
- Operational efficiency: eliminating manual workarounds
- Clinical impact: improving patient understanding and outcomes
- Financial return: millions in preventable cost savings
A New Standard for Patient Advocacy
Commence brings deep experience in structured data, clinical expertise, and health system integration.
- Trusted by CMS, the VA, and 60% of the Medicare population
- 500+ licensed clinicians and 54 specialties represented
- 8M+ pages processed daily across critical workflows
With Fetch, we’re applying that expertise to language access—helping regional providers and national systems meet the growing needs of diverse communities without overburdening staff.
Fetch is more than a technology launch. For patients, it means instructions they can trust. For providers, it means compliance, efficiency, and measurable savings. And for the industry as a whole, it signals a new standard: delivering care with clarity and compassion.
This is not just about translating documents. This is about transforming how care is delivered—one patient, one summary, one health system at a time.