On the heels of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s agreement with big-name, statewide pharmacies to provide translation assistance to customers, elected officials and advocates gathered at City Hall recently to urge the passing of a City Council bill that would enforce such services at all of the city’s chain pharmacies.
Cuomo’s agreements, announced April 21, were the result of his undercover investigation into pharmacists’ alleged disregard for a state law prohibiting them from discriminating, via their business practices, against non-English speakers.
The agreements will affect the pharmacy counters at statewide retailers including Wal-Mart, Target, Duane Reade, Costco and A & P-operated supermarkets. Like settlements reached with CVS and Rite Aid in November 2008, the latest agreements call on the pharmacies to provide prescription labels and directions regarding medication dosage and safety information in the six languages spoken by over one percent of the state’s population.
While advocacy groups like Make the Road New York – which initially brought the issue to Cuomo’s attention and filed a 2006 civil rights complaint against several major New York pharmacies – lauded the Attorney General for his “landmark” agreements, they realize the settlements are time-limited and will expire within a few years.
The Language Access in Pharmacies Act, on the other hand, introduced by Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and 12 City Councilmembers in October 2008, would have no time constraint and would augment the existing state law, as well as bolster Cuomo’s agreements with the seven pharmacy chains.
The bill, if passed, would indefinitely require every chain pharmacy to provide “free, competent oral interpretation services” to limited English proficiency (LEP) individuals regarding their medication prescriptions, warning labels and patient information sheets.
Additionally, under the law, pharmacies would have to “conspicuously post” a notification of patients’ right to translation services. Smaller pharmacies, for which such services are not mandated, would have to provide a notification of three nearby pharmacies that do offer translations. A failure to comply would result in a fine.
In the bill’s language, its authors cited a 2007 New York Academy of Medicine study that found that just 34 percent of city pharmacies reported translating prescription labels on a daily basis. This, despite the fact that 88 percent admitted serving LEP customers and 80 percent were capable of providing translations.
“Clearly understanding a prescription you are given is a basic right, yet pharmacies all around the city are allowing New Yorkers to take home medication with instructions they can’t understand,” Gotbaum said in a statement the day of the May 4 hearing to promote the Council’s bill. “If even a few words of a vital medical instruction are lost on a patient, the result can be disastrous. We owe it to New Yorkers to pass this bill.”
