The Iowa Medical Society is challenging federal rules requiring the use of interpreters to treat immigrant patients.
Many doctors, especially those in small towns, have a difficult time finding competent interpreters, the society says. And professional interpreters can charge up to $100 an hour, an exorbitant amount for small-town clinics.
The group says the government should try to help instead of threatening to punish doctors struggling to comply.
Society President Sterling Laaveg wrote a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services calling the regulators’ stance “highly inappropriate.”
Fred Laing, acting regional manager for the department’s Office of Civil Rights, said federal regulators would consider the circumstances if they received a discrimination complaint against a doctor.
The government could stop federal payments or take a doctor to court, but Laing said most cases are settled before they go that far.
The rules were outlined last year in a 20-page federal memo.
“There’s really nothing new here,” Laing said.
Some medical professionals disagree.
“It was news to us,” said Julie Barto, administrator of a gynecology practice in Sioux City.
Barto said Siouxland Women’s Health Care can’t afford interpreters for the growing number of Hispanic, Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese immigrants it treats.
Patients sometimes hire their own interpreters, Barto said, or bring along children or other relatives who speak English.
Regulators say that patients can be uncomfortable talking candidly to doctors in front of family members and that those interpreters often cannot explain complicated medical terms.
