BOSTON – Americans with total hearing impairment, numbering in the millions, now can rest a little easier when they enter a hospital, thanks to an American Sign Language video interpreting service, available at Boston Medical Center and hospitals across the country.

“We want to be known as a deaf-friendly hospital,” said Oscar Arocha, director of interpreting services and guest support services at Boston Medical Center. “This is a great way to provide deaf patients with the ease of mind that they will be understood.”

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires health facilities to provide an ASL interpreter for patients. To help hospitals meet that requirement, DT Interpreting, a service of Deaf Talk in a recent partnership with Sony Electronics, provides facilities with Sony’s IPELA PSC-TL30 video conferencing system.

“It has become easier through time as there have been more developments with the equipment,” Arocha said. “We have been working with DT Interpreting from the beginning. The first unit was the size of a refrigerator. Now, it is a flat screen monitor, a microphone, a Web camera and keyboard attached to a pole on wheels.”

When a deaf patient enters the hospital, staff members roll the equipment to the desired location, plug it into a network outlet and make a toll-free telephone call to a 24-hour national interpreting service.

More than 40 nationally certified ASL interpreters are available to arrive at one of the five call centers within minutes.

Hamot Medical Center in Erie, Pa., has used DT Interpreting technology for several years. The hospital, which sees about 20 deaf patients each month, has two units, one of which resides permanently in Hamot’s emergency department.

Barbara Magee, a nurse analyst at Hamot, says the deaf community has reacted positively to the technology. “It is our obligation to do this extra push,” she said.

 “We are sure that we’re able to understand our patients, and we have all the right facts to clearly explain the options to the patients.”

Started in 2000, DT Interpreting has more than 200 hospital subscribers and hopes to connect to every U.S. hospital with this telehealth technology.

“It’s an aggressive goal,” said Robert Fisher, president and co-founder of Deaf Talk.  “We expect to have orders for 500 hospitals by the end of the year.”