National Medical Interpreter Salary Survey To Provide Key Insight Into The Medical Interpreting Profession

Online, May 10, 2010 (Newswire.com) - On April 29th, 2010 the International Medical Interpreters Association (IMIA) launched its Fifth National Salary Survey. The 2010 survey promises to yield the strongest data to date, thanks to our collaborators and improved research technologies which will better assess the aggregate data. The following organizations have collaborated with the IMIA to create the 2010 Medical Interpreter Salary Survey: Association of Translators and Interpreters of Florida (ATIF), Medical Interpreter Network of Georgia (MING), Nebraska Association of Translators and interpreters (NATI), and the Southeast Medical Interpreters Association (SEMIA). The survey will offer key insight into the medical interpreting profession and how wages are determined.

The data from the this year's survey will be used to benchmark current compensation trends and create an industry standard tool to document the working conditions of medical interpreters. Last year, more than 550 interpreters and managers from forty-two states participated in the International Medical Interpreters Association (IMIA) Annual Salary Survey; that participation was significantly higher than in the previous year. This year the 2010 survey is expected to have a higher response rate than previous years. The fifth yearly survey results promise to provide the data needed to start looking at professional trends, and to be a tool for interpreters and managers to use to make decisions related to medical interpreter wages.

"The compensation rates reflect the current standards of recruitment, training and hiring of medical interpreters. National certification will ensure competency and therefore ensure patient safety and equal access to health care in diverse populations," explained Izabel Arocha, IMIA president. "Certified ASL interpreters earn higher wages than spoken language interpreters, who until 2009 did not have a national certification available to them. This has changed with national certification available for Spanish medical interpreters. Spanish language interpreting counts for 70% of healthcare interpreting in the US. As the awareness for minimum competency increases and more languages are added to national certification, the profession will become more attractive for those that are looking to enter a credentialed profession."

Demand for qualified medical interpreters continues to grow at a higher rate than in other professions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"This national salary survey data is very important to be able to quantify national costs for our requests to the federal government for the reimbursement of medical interpreter costs. This is important work that these organizations are doing collaboratively to help our departments have a funded mandate for language access, which right now is mostly unfunded. This is the fifth year in which this data is collected, and hopefully h the reliability of the data in the long run will be established." stated Oscar Arocha, Director of Boston Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts.