BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Most pediatricians do not hire trained interpreters to communicate with patients who do not speak English well, according to a study by Johns Hopkins University.

The study surveyed 1,829 physicians from the American Academy of Pediatrics and found that 70 percent of doctors rely on a bilingual family member to provide translation services to the patient, which can lead to poor-quality health care, said Dr. Dennis Kuo, the lead author of the study and a general pediatrics fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

“This is about training interpreters to do medical interpreting well,” Kuo said. “A medical term in one language may have no direct translation in another language.

Language services have gotten a fair amount of publicity, but not enough that primary care physicians understand the importance of using them.”

One of the main problems with offering language services is that the doctors’ offices usually bear the cost of interpreters.

“Doctors can’t charge patients for the services, so they are burdened with the cost,” Kuo said.

Most insurance companies do not pay for the language services, and only a handful of states offer insurance reimbursements for the service when the patient has public health insurance.

According to the National Health Law Program, Maryland was not one of the 11 states that offered reimbursements to Medicaid recipients as of December 2005.

The study also found that 58 percent of doctors depend on bilingual staff members to provide language services, and 40 percent of those surveyed use professional interpreters.

“We know that proper language services are linked with better health care outcomes; we need to reduce the burden on health care providers,” Kuo said.

According to 2000 census figures, nearly 6 percent of people in Maryland speak English “less than well.”

dulman@baltimoreexaminer.com