Languages Spoken by Patients and Hospital-Based Providers in California

The dataset contains percentages of languages spoken for patient encounters in an inpatient setting, the emergency room, and hospital-based ambulatory surgery centers as well as languages spoken by the hospital-based workforce. There are also patient encounter-to-provider license ratios for each language by county. The patient encounter to provider license ratio can serve as an indicator for patient demand or need for services from a provider in a specific language. Smaller ratios indicate fewer patient encounters per provider license and less demand. Larger ratios of patient encounters per provider license indicate greater need for services in that language. This analysis features 45 languages that overlap between the patient-level data and health workforce data. These languages are grouped into the following language groups: African Languages, Asian and Pacific Islander Languages, European Languages, Middle Eastern Languages, Navajo Language, Spanish Language, and Sign Languages.