Colorado hospital trains bilingual staff to improve interpreter access

At Grand River Health in Rifle, bilingual employees became part of the hospital’s answer to a problem that can shape whether patients are understood, treated safely and kept out of the hospital. Jen Quevedo now serves as the facility’s language access coordinator and interprets for patients, leading an in-house effort that trained existing staff to become certified medical interpreters.

The program began about two years ago and formalized a training path that takes roughly 40 to 60 hours. Instead of relying on family members or other improvised translation methods, Grand River Health built language access into everyday workflows. The result has been less dependence on ad hoc interpretation, reported cost savings for the hospital and better service for Spanish-speaking patients in a rural community where access to qualified interpreters is not always easy to secure.

The move also fits a broader legal and clinical framework that has made language access a compliance issue, not an optional service. Covered health entities that receive funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are required to take reasonable steps to provide meaningful access to people with limited English proficiency, and HHS says language assistance must be provided free of charge. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act also sit behind those obligations.

Federal health policy ties the issue directly to outcomes. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says language barriers are linked to lower quality care, poor clinical outcomes, longer hospital stays and higher readmission rates. CMS also says effective communication is a core part of high-quality, equitable care, which makes interpreter access a patient-safety issue as much as a civil-rights one.

Colorado’s data show why the stakes are especially high. The 2021 Colorado Health Access Survey found that people who speak a language other than English at home were less likely to have seen a general doctor in the previous year. The Colorado Health Institute has said language barriers, lower health literacy and lack of trust contribute to health disparities, and that some residents avoid care when they fear being treated unfairly. Migration Policy Institute estimates that more than 300,000 Coloradans have limited proficiency in English.

Grand River Health’s public compliance materials now list a designated language access coordinator and language assistance services, signaling that the hospital has moved interpreter work from the margins into routine operations. Other Colorado efforts are pushing in the same direction, including the University of Northern Colorado’s RISE Project, which aims to increase the number of qualified interpreters in rural areas, and expanded medical Spanish training at the University of Colorado Denver. Together, those efforts point to a model that can improve care, reduce liability and make financial sense for hospitals confronting a national language-access gap.