Healthcare Interpreting in the Netherlands

The relative health of our global economy has the potential to greatly impact the work of patients and providers who rely on qualified interpreters in healthcare settings.  A posting on AIIC.net by Michelle Renee shares that the situation in the Netherlands may have dire consequences.  Entitled, “The death of healthcare interpreting in the Netherlands,” the post explains how to save funds, the government has decided that it will no longer pay for interpreting services for non-Dutch speaking people. The new policy is that providers will need to depend on interpreters that patients bring.
The following subtitled video illustrates the potential problems with this policy.

To learn more about the situation in the Netherlands, read the complete blog post.