Disparities in eye clinic patient encounters among patients requiring language interpreter services

BMC Ophthalmology

Table 2 Patient characteristics by language grouping and self-identified need for an interpreter

	English	Spanish		Other Languages
Self-identified as interpreter needed?	N/A	No	Yes	No	Yes
Unique patients, n	23,309	2,366	7,967	995	1,866
Average (SD) age at first visit in years	40.8 (21.6)	31.9^a (23.2)	41.4^b (24.2)	35.9^a (24.7)	49.4^a,b (24.2)
%No show probability	27.7%	18.9%^a	14.9%^a,b	19.0%^a	15.0%^a,b
%Primary Financial Class^c
Commercial	12.2%	4.8%	3.0%	6.4%	1.7%
Correctional Care	2.6%	0.7%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%
Fin Assist	2.5%	21.8%	34.4%	17.9%	23.5%
Medicaid	49.4%	54.7%	35.8%	62.8%	49.3%
Medicare	33.1%	17.0%	26.4%	12.8%	25.3%
Workers Comp	0.2%	1.0%	0.2%	0%	0%

Abbreviations: SD Standard Deviation, Fin Financial
^aSignificantly different compared to English p < 0.01, Wilcoxon rank sum test
^bSignificantly different compared to no interpreter of the same language group, p < 0.01, Wilcoxon rank sum test
^cMissing for 814 records. Not tested for statistical comparisons

ISSN: 1471-2415