How Lee Health Built Language Access Into the Heart of Care
Learn how Lee Health integrated on-site and remote interpreting into care delivery to advance quality, compliance, and patient equity.
SUMMARY
Lee Health's language access formula includes:
✔ Staff interpreters as the foundation Lee Health uses professional, on‑site interpretation as core clinical infrastructure.
✔ VRI and remote modalities augment staff Video and phone interpreting expand coverage across rooms, hours, and sites while maintaining quality and speed.
✔ A bilingual/dual‑role pathway Activates multilingual team members for defined scenarios after assessment and training.
✔ Governance and measurement Readmissions, length of stay (LOS), and other metrics are tracked and analyzed through a language lens.
Lee Health’s framework, at its essence, is as elegant as it is effective: start with staff, extend with remote, measure by outcomes.
Founded in 1916, Lee Health is a community‑focused nonprofit serving Southwest Florida through acute, specialty, pediatric, rehab, skilled nursing, outpatient, and urgent care facilities.
With a workforce of more than 17,000 employees and 2,500 medical staff, Lee Health supports care across 100+ practice locations.
Fast facts
2M+ patient contacts annually; 17,000+ employees; 2,500+ medical staff; 950+ primary and specialty care physicians
Hospitals: Lee Memorial (336 beds), HealthPark (326), Cape Coral (303), Gulf Coast (699), Golisano Children’s Hospital (135)
Rehab Hospitals: Fort Myers (60 beds), Cape Coral (40 beds)
Skilled Nursing Units: Lee Memorial (18), Gulf Coast (75), HealthPark Care Center (112)
Additional Settings: Outpatient centers across the region; multiple urgent care locations
A story from the floor
On a busy morning at Gulf Coast Medical Center, interpreter Maria Marin walks from one department to the next. “There’s no room in this hospital I haven’t been to,” she says. Whether the next encounter is cardiology, urology, or oncology, her goal never changes: “It’s the patient’s right to know and understand everything that is happening.”
Across campus, Dr. Selynto Anderson, Chief Community Health & Impact Officer, watches the same work from a system lens. Southwest Florida is growing and diverse, and that reality shows up in both quality dashboards and patient‑experience surveys.
“We don’t necessarily have staff interpreters in every single touchpoint of our health system… so the VRI gives us the capability to communicate with those patients in real time,” he explains.
Remote modalities are designed to augment staff interpretation, not to replace it.
The background
Clinical communication is often complex, varying across trauma bays, perioperative suites, oncology units, and outpatient clinics. Bridging language barriers needs reliability at scale: making sure every patient, in every room, at any hour, can connect with a qualified medical interpreter without slowing care.
As Dr. Anderson puts it, the work must reach “a variety of different spaces” so patients can actually consume and understand their care information.
Map showing Lee County in red.
Lee Health serves a fast-growing, linguistically diverse community. The challenge is giving every patient a qualified interpreter at the exact moment of need across the emergency department (ED), oncology, inpatient floors, ambulatory clinics, and other care settings.
If language access is inconsistent, LEP patients can be readmitted at higher rates. Information, like discharge summaries, pharmacy prescriptions, and portal messages, must be delivered in a way patients can actually understand.
The downstream effects can show up in length of stay (LOS) through delayed discharges, safety/quality variation, and ED throughput. The mandate: make qualified interpreting instant, universal, and embedded so outcomes improve.
ⓘ Interested in how you can improve care with language access? Contact us.
The Lee Health approach
Lee Health’s model starts with professional, on-site medical interpreters as the clinical foundation and uses video remote interpreting (VRI) and over-the-phone interpretation (OPI) to augment that foundation throughout the facilities and beyond standard hours.
The aim is reliability at the moment of need without adding friction to care.
Coverage model: staff first, remote to scale
High-acuity and planned encounters are led by staff interpreters; VRI extends qualified access to every room and clinical situation, and phone interpreting can be accessed for audio-appropriate use cases.
“We don’t necessarily have staff interpreters in every single touchpoint of our health system,” said Dr. Anderson. “That’s just not feasible, so VRI gives us the capability to communicate with those patients in real time,” he added, calling remote modalities “a very important” complement to on-site teams.
Safe bilingual pathway
To expand coverage, Lee Health operates a dual-role, bilingual program. This program helps train Lee Health’s bilingual team members so they’re equipped to interpret in specific scenarios.
Governance and measurement through a language lens
Program oversight extends beyond bedside moments to the “last mile”, where important information like discharge instructions, pharmacy directions, portal messages, and surveys are delivered in the patient’s language.
“The question is, are we providing information in a way patients can actually consume and understand?” Dr. Anderson said.
Human practice at the core
For interpreters like Maria Marin at Gulf Coast Medical Center, the craft is equal parts preparation and presence. “There’s no room in this hospital I haven’t been to,” she said. The department or need may change, but the standard does not.
“It’s the patient’s right to know and understand everything that is happening,” Marin said. “Our job is to make sure when we leave that room, they understood everything they were told.”
ⓘ Interested in how you can improve care with language access? Contact us.
In summary
Gulf Coast Medical Center in Fort Myers, Florida.
At Lee Health, language access is critical clinical infrastructure. Staff interpreters stay at the center, and remote modalities extend that expertise to every room and hour. With a dual-role pathway, one-tap workflows, and an operational scorecard read through a language lens, Lee's language access program scales without trading away safety or clarity.
The result is cleaner consent, steadier discharges, and calmer patients across the hospital system.
Lee Health’s framework, at its essence, is as elegant as it is effective: start with staff, extend with remote, measure by outcomes.
