DENVER — Efforts to reach Spanish-speakers in Colorado have become a top priority for healthcare providers as the Latino community continues to be one of the hardest hit by the pandemic in the state.
That’s why interpreters at UCHealth have turned their attention to making hundreds of calls every day to share vaccine opportunities in several languages.
“It's just so fun to deliver this good news to people,” said Pamela Piesman, a medical interpreter at UCHealth for the last 8 years. “Most days I feel like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy combined. People are just so happy to get the news that they're going to be vaccinated.”
Piesman is one of UCHealth's 45 medical interpreters who are now using their language skills on hundreds of calls a week.
“We learned fairly quickly that invitations going out electronically to some of our patients were not getting responded to,” said Scott Suckow, the director of language services for UCHealth. “Specifically our senior citizen patients who do not speak English."
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Suckow said that’s when interpreters like Piesman turned their attention almost full time to calling non-English speaking patients directly when it’s their turn to be vaccinated.
“It's mind-boggling; the whole process is pretty complicated,” Piesman said of the COVID-19 vaccine signup process in the state. “We're going through it with my husband now, trying to get him vaccinated. He speaks the language and he's frustrated."
She and her fellow interpreters are handed a list of hundreds of names and numbers each day, and thousands more are waiting when they get done. Piesman said she can make about 100 calls a day. She leaves a lot of messages, she said, but her favorite is hearing a patient’s joy when learning they qualify to get vaccinated.
“We're so involved in technology as a culture that we think everyone is and it's just not true,” Piesman continued. “Not everyone has access. The vast, vast majority of the people I’ve talked to do not have computer access and certainly don't have the ‘My Health Connection,’ which is where they would go to sign up for the vaccine."
After about 3,000 of these calls in the last two weeks, UCHealth has seen a 20% increase in appointments among Spanish-speaking patients.
“To be able to help somebody through that process who wouldn’t otherwise be able to sign up is very rewarding,” Piesman said.
Patients spoke a total of 18 different languages at UCHealth’s Coors Field mass vaccine clinic in January, according to a UCHealth rep. Languages include Spanish, Arabic, Ethiopian, Sign Language, Mandarin and more. That representation is why UCHealth is committed to interpreter presence on-site of vaccine clinics, and why Suckow said they will grow the 45-person team if demand continues to grow.
UCHealth now also has a Spanish hotline for vaccine inquiries: 844-945 -2508.
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