A new study suggests home health patients with a language barrier are at an increased risk for rehospitalization.
The study was published in the International Journal of Nursing Studies, according to an NYU news release.
Researchers looked at more than 87,000 patient records and found patients who preferred a language other than English had a higher hospital readmission rate (20.4%) than English-speaking patients (18.5%). Risk of readmission also varied by language, with higher risk among Spanish and Russian speakers and lower risk among Chinese and Korean speakers.
The researchers recommend using a variety of approaches to address this disparity, including team-based care transition programs from hospital to home health care that account for patient language preferences, improving translation capabilities and employing health care teams that speak the same languages as their patients.