Language a challenge for migrants seeking healthcare: report

MORE needs to be done to help people from non-English speaking backgrounds achieve better healthcare outcomes, according to Murray Primary Health Network chief executive officer Matt Jones.

His comments follow the release of the Murray Health Report 2024, which examines multiculturalism in the network’s 100,000-square-kilometre region covering 22 local government areas and cities such as Bendigo.

According to the report, 88,217 people said in the 2021 census that they were born overseas, accounting for almost 12 per cent of the Murray PHN region’s total population. Of those, almost two-thirds came from mainly non-English speaking backgrounds.

It says the greatest number of permanent settlers in 2022–23 were skilled migrants (75 per cent), followed by family (16 per cent) and humanitarian settlers (nine per cent).

Greater Bendigo, Greater Shepparton and Mildura are the three municipalities with the most overseas-born residents, the report says, and the top three languages spoken other than English are Punjabi, Italian and Mandarin.

It says many of the region’s overseas-born residents are highly skilled contributors to the healthcare sector, working as medical practitioners, nurses, aged care workers and more.

But the document also says that for some people from multicultural backgrounds, language barriers, health literacy, cultural safety, previous trauma and stigma can all play a part in them failing to get healthcare in the right place, at the right time.

Mr Jones said everyone needed to do more to support what he described as “these underserviced groups” in the community, and more coordination among service providers would be a step in the right direction.

“While many of our migrants have, or achieve, fluency in English, others struggle with healthcare information that is not in their native tongues,” he said.

“In recent times, Murray PHN has funded health navigator programs in Bendigo…where native speakers of various languages can reach out to local diverse communities and help them, literally, to navigate the health system.

“Primary care providers can now access a range of quality resources to help them deliver optimum patient care to non-English speaking people.

“Importantly, most providers can access telephone interpreting services free of charge to help them understand and then capture the social, cultural and health issues that can make good medical care possible.”

Mr Jones said cultural background data was not consistently captured in healthcare settings, but information like country of birth, language spoken, interpreter required, ethnicity/cultural background and year of arrival in Australia should be regularly gathered in a sensitive and supporting way to help tailor services and programs.

The report is available at murrayphn.org.au/news.