Interpretive Services and Accessibility

Group Health strives to remove barriers to care, whether they are due to language differences or physical impairments.

Interpretive Services

Group Health provides professional interpreters in any language, free of charge. We train our staff to recognize when an interpreter is needed, how to communicate the option for an interpreter, and how to make an interpreter available.

Interpreters also are available to those with sight, speech, and hearing impairments. Group Health provides free professional sign language and tactile interpreters for those with speech and hearing impairments, as well as Braille translations of certain print materials.

Resource Line offers some member information materials in languages other than English. Additionally, many of our providers are bilingual. When searching for a provider in our Provider Directory, indicate an alternative language preference by choosing from the drop-down menu under Additional Information.

International Services for Japanese Speakers

International Services is a fee-for-service clinic that provides care and assistance for patients whose first language is Japanese or who can more easily communicate in Japanese. Patients receive care from Dr. Kumiko Nomoto, a Japanese-speaking physician at Group Health's Redmond Medical Center at Riverpark.

Also see: "International Services" in Japanese (PDF).

International Services also provides support for employer-requested executive physicals, which are scheduled via the Occupational Medicine Clinic at Bellevue Medical Center. (Patients seeking executive physicals are seen by Bellevue Medical Center physicans. Dr. Nomoto sees patients at Redmond only.)

Accessibility

Group Health offers auxiliary services to ensure effective communication for individuals with speech, hearing, or sight impairments. We also address accessibility for those with mobility impairments in accordance with federal, state, and local law, and in particular, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA).

For individuals with hearing and speech impairments, Group Health works with Washington Relay Service and Idaho Relay Service to communicate with those who use TTY machines. You can find the local TTY number listed on each of our medical facility pages.

Our Web site adheres to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make the Web site accessible to people who may be using devices such as computers that read the text of a Web page out loud.

Service Animals

A service animal is an animal trained to assist a person who has a disability. Service animals guide people with vision impairments, alert individuals with hearing impairments, pull wheelchairs, alert and protect people who are having a seizure, and perform other special tasks. A service animal may accompany a person in the normal use of Group Health facilities except when the animal is out of control and the animal's owner does not take effective action to control it, the animal poses a direct threat to health and safety of others. or both.