Many health care facilities provide in-house interpreting services. If this is the case, service providers can request an interpreter when making an appointment with the client.
If the health care facility does not provide in-house interpretation service, service providers can contact specialized agencies, community-based interpretation services or a remote interpretation service.
Some provinces/territories and health regions provide interpreting services free of charge, whether it be in-person, over the phone or via videoconferencing. Service providers outside the region may be able to access the interpreting service for a fee. Examples of these services include the following:
Provincial Language Service provides interpretation services in over 150 languages to all of BC's health authorities (on-site, telephone or via video conference, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week).
Languages Services Toronto (LST) provides real-time, over the phone interpretation (OPI) services in 170 languages, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to clients accessing health services at participating organizations.
Alberta Health Services offers interpretation for Covenant Health sites and certain hospitals.
Health PEI covers the cost of telephone language interpretation services.
Capital Health covers the cost of face-to-face and telephone interpretation services.
Manitoba Shared Health's Language Access provides interpretation services.
HealthLine 811 provides health information and mental health and addictions support to callers, with translation available in more than 100 language.