But Iwataki said county language services have improved in the last year. This year, nine full-time healthcare interpreters will be hired for the first time for the hospitals.
In addition, the county expanded its video medical interpretation system to all four hospitals this year. The system, which was introduced at Rancho Los Amigos Rehabilitation Center in Downey last year, uses video-conferencing technology to connect doctors and patients with an interpreter network that offers assistance in Armenian, Russian, Korean, Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese.
County hospitals also use a phone-in interpreter system. But that system is flawed, according to Wingshan Lo of the Asian Pacific center. Lo said she tested the system last year and was hooked up to a language assistance center whose staffer did not understand the Cantonese she was speaking.
In addition, immigrant advocates said many hospital staff are not aware that healthcare providers who receive federal funding are legally required to offer language assistance, regardless of the patients' immigration status. PALS for Health, a Los Angeles nonprofit organization that provides language assistance, gets several complaints every month about healthcare providers who tell patients they need to find their own interpreters, according to Marchela Iahdjian of the organization.
Iwataki agreed that more needs to be done but said impending budget cuts could make that difficult.
"We are struggling to do our best with very limited resources, but we're not giving up," she said.
The case of Li, the Chinese native with ovarian cancer, illustrates the plight faced by many immigrants. Li, 62, is a naturalized U.S. citizen but said she has long lived in an isolated ethnic enclave in Alhambra. Too busy to take English classes, she was an around-the-clock personal assistant to a Chinese senior citizen for several years, then worked 15-hour days at a Chinese restaurant. She watches Chinese TV and shops at Chinese stores.
Li said she never needed English -- until her abdomen suddenly began swelling painfully in June 2005 and her Chinese doctor referred her to County-USC Medical Center. There, she couldn't communicate with the doctors. "I was petrified by my inability to communicate," Li said. "I thought I was going to die. I wondered: Who is going to help me?"
Li said she wandered into the hospital waiting room and randomly asked an Asian-looking patient if she could speak Chinese. Luckily for her, the patient could -- and referred Li to the PALS for Health group, which sent a trained healthcare interpreter with her to future appointments. Although initially told that she had only a month to live, she said her cancer has stopped spreading after surgery and chemotherapy.
Immigrant advocates urged the county to provide more English-language classes and interpretation services.
"There's no excuse not to provide these services," said Doreena P. Wong, staff attorney with the National Health Law Program. "People's lives are at stake."
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teresa.watanabe@latimes.com
