American Sign Language

Interpreter Services

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Steward Health Care is working to improve the health care experience for our deaf, hard of hearing, and deaf-blind patients and visitors at our facilities through strategic expansion of equivalent access resources. The following is a list of "best practice" projects in-progress across our system. Please send inquiries, feedback, and suggestions to coordinator of Interpreter Services Aaron Lemmon at [email protected].

Steward Health Care Contact List

Carney Hospital

Phone: 617-296-4000

TTY: 617-506-4327

Email

Good Samaritan Medical Center

Phone: 508-427-3000

TTY: 508-588-1272

Email

Holy Family Hospital

Phone: 978-687-0151

TTY: 978-659-6005

Email

Merrimack Valley Hospital

Phone: 978-374-2000

TTY: 978-372-8179

Email

Morton Hospital

Phone: 508-828-7000

TTY: 508-822-3898

Email

Nashoba Valley Medical Center

Phone: 978-794-9000

TTY: 978-784-9595

Email

New England Sinai Hospital

Phone: 781-344-0600

TTY: 781-341-2395 

Email

Norwood Hospital

Phone: 781-769-4000

TTY: 781-278-0232

Email

Saint Anne's Hospital

Phone: 508-674-5600

TTY: 508-675-5653

Email

St. Elizabeth's Medical Center

Phone: 617-789-3000

TTY: 617-789-2899

Email

 

NexTalk Video Relay Interpretation (VRI) System

Steward Health Care has installed NexTalk VRI systems at each of our hospitals to ensure that any patient with a sign language communication need is able to engage his or her health care provider team without delay whenever in-person sign language Interpreters are not available. This portable communication technology also allows deaf and hard of hearing family members and friends to fully participate in the hospital visits of hearing patients if requested by the patient. The NexTalk system is both H323 and TTY compatible.

Sorenson Videophones

Steward Health Care is in the process of expanding on-site VRI resources with dedicated Sorenson deaf videophones at our hospitals for the use of our outpatients and visitors. Once deployed, this new technology will ensure our NexTalk systems are always available for inpatient and emergency clinical care while ensuring that other persons on-site with a need for VRI service are able to stay in communication with friends and loved ones. Just as with NexTalk, Sorenson devices are H323 and TTY compatible.

Update: Feedback from one recent site visitor included the suggestion to upload hospital maps with our Sorenson locations marked on them for the convenience of patients and visitors before they arrive at our facilities. We will post location maps as each Sorenson system goes online - keep the comments coming! 

 

Language Identification Cards

Steward Health Care has offered language identification cards called iSpeak cards to patients requiring spoken language interpretation for several years. Such resources make it much easier for patients to ensure their language needs are correctly identified and appropriately met. Encouraged by positive feedback from this prior initiative, Steward is now developing online access cards for deaf, hard of hearing, and visually limited patients. Our resources are already available for preliminary viewing, and we are working with our web development team to format entered information into an identification card our patients can print out on their home computers to carry with them everywhere. Stay tuned!

Health Education Resources

Steward Health Care believes that ensuring our patients are fully informed of the risks and benefits of complex procedures and tests is the best possible way to ensure that complications are minimized and outcomes improved. Consequently, we are researching ASL education video content to be hosted and/or linked on this site for the use of our patients. All suggestions for possible resources are welcome!

#1. DeafMD is an innovative website providing accurate, concise, and valuable health information in American Sign Language to the Deaf & Hard of Hearing population. Using health information created by two trustworthy and unbiased government sources—the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, DeafMD's team of healthcare providers, linguists, and educators translates this complex information into ASL.