Language Barriers in Pharmacy Create Serious Safety Risks

For the growing number of limited English proficiency (LEP) patients walking into community pharmacies every day, a prescription label they cannot read is not just an inconvenience; it is a potential medical emergency.

In a recent conversation with Sharon Blank, CEO of RxTran and Language Scientific, she laid out the 3 outcomes that most commonly occur when a patient cannot understand their prescription label: they avoid taking the medication out of fear, they take the wrong dose or follow the wrong schedule, or they turn to an untrained family member to interpret instructions that require clinical precision.

According to her, none of these outcomes are acceptable, and none of them are rare.

LEP patients represent a growing share of nearly every major US metro area. They are also disproportionately concentrated in the chronic disease populations, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and behavioral health, where medication adherence is not just beneficial but critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. One study of more than 400,000 hospitalized adults found that LEP patients had a 33% higher odds of readmission within 7 days, even after adjusting for clinical and demographic factors.

For pharmacists, the burden of this gap falls squarely on their shoulders. Most are managing these situations daily without purpose-built tools, relying instead on Google Translate or bundled software solutions that come with liability waivers shifting all professional and legal risk back to the pharmacy. Meanwhile, the line keeps growing.

Listen through Blank’s insights into why this language issue is compounding for LEP patients in the pharmacy, especially at a time where pharmacists are under unprecedented pressure.

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