Evaluating the Costs of Bridging Language Barriers in Health Care

The primary goal of this paper is to present an analytical framework for estimating the costs of methods designed to bridge language barriers in health care. The material presented here is written for health care administrators and public health officials who are evaluating, or who expect to evaluate, the results of analyses and published studies on the economic consequences of language programs in health care. This paper also may be seen as providing guidelines for researchers and students interested in designing and conducting economic studies of such language programs. A taxonomy of methods that have been developed to bridge language barriers in health care is discussed. Economic principles for assessing costs of these methods then are described, as well as their potential applications by health care institutions. Last, these principles are illustrated by comparing the implementation costs of two interpretive services.