5 ways to save money against your interpreting budget

With over 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Word360 has spent a lot of time working with the NHS to evaluate the scope and budgets of the UK’s interpreting requirements.

We have worked with some of our closest NHS partners to share five ways that you and your language partner can trim costs and make language support more affordable for your organisation.

1. Digital first approach

There continues to be a steady rise in digital language services as primary and acute care adopt the long-term vision of NHS Digital. Request that your supplier provides a transition plan to help you move to a more digital approach. Technology solutions such as telephone and video interpreting can help drive down the cost associated with face-to-face interpreters and travel costs, where appointments are routine or for short periods.

2. Reduce reliance on face-to-face interpreting

Face-to-face interpreting will always be the gold standard of delivery, as it offers the highest quality in terms of delivering information, expressing and interpreting visual cues, showing empathy and engaging with non-English speakers. However, there are advantages to using remote telephone and video interpreting services. Apart from being more cost-effective for short calls, they require little or no notice meaning you can be reactive to your language needs and connect to interpreters via telephone or video-on-demand in as little as 30 seconds.

This eradicates the need for anticipating and pre-booking services, whilst offering access to over 350 languages and dialects. Remote video interpreting also gives you access to British Sign Language interpreters that can be difficult to source locally. With most remote interpreting services there are no equipment costs - all you need is a telephone, mobile, tablet or computer. Learn more

3. Remove the cost of non-attendance 

One of the leading causes for non-attendance amongst non-English speaking (NES) patients is the inability to contact practices to cancel an appointment, change the time or make transport arrangements. 

Having a multilingual call connection service has been shown to reduce the number of missed appointments by over 50%, when patients can manage their own bookings.

Leicester ICB was able to reduce missed appointments by NES patients by 67% in 6 months in this way, by enabling patients to self-service and manage their own care. With each missed appointment costing the NHS on average £150 per person, how much money could you save in this way?

4. Eliminate wasted admin time 

Do you experience time wasted by DNAs and staff going out of their way to coordinate patients and interpreters? Inbound telephone interpreting services like Wordskii Connect enable NES patients to be triaged before appointments are booked.

Driving efficiencies like this saved Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust over 2 hours per week in admin time, as staff are able to access interpreters when they need them as opposed to planning and booking face-to-face interpreters in advance.

5. Limit off-contract spend

Driving down costs is only worthwhile if you have an assurance of supply and your language provider is able to support you in every language at any time, anywhere. When this is not the case, your teams will spend time and money trying to source alternative suppliers that invariably end up costing more and drive down quality. Simple steps to avoid this are:

• Ensure your supplier has the specific languages needed to support your requirements over the life of a contract
• Ensure staff are aware of booking processes so that requests are made in advance, giving any suppliers enough time to source the right interpreter
• Ensure your supplier has secondary suppliers who align with the same delivery standards and processes to deliver services when they do not have the provision

Want to learn more?

If you would like a free evaluation of your services to see how you can drive efficiencies and make your budget go further in 2023, please get in touch. We offer a no-obligation gap analysis on your services that could help you save in your 2023/24 budget.

Get in touch.