Translated prescription labels: Can pharmacies reduce risk, boost adherence, and attract more customers?

Translated prescription labels play a key role in helping patients understand how to take their medications safely and correctly. Approximately nine percent of the U.S. population has Limited English Proficiency (LEP). Some 25 million Americans struggle to understand, speak, read, and write in English (source: Migration Policy Institute). In today’s pharmacy environment, clear communication is not only a patient care issue. It touches on compliance, risk management, and health equity. As pharmacists take on a more consultative role, pharmacies need reliable systems to support LEP patients. Accurate, pharmacy-specific translation solutions can boost medication compliance, reduce liability, create loyal customers, and support safer care from the outset.

Why This Matters Now 

The role of the pharmacist is expanding…rapidly. Multinational healthcare software company Wolters Kluwer recently noted that pharmacists are taking on an increasingly consultative role. More patients have chronic conditions. Healthy patients often prefer to visit a pharmacy for a simple medical issue, versus making a doctor’s appointment. And, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly a third of Americans over 60 regularly take five or more prescription drugs. Pharmacies are no longer just “the place to get your prescription filled.” They’re becoming decentralized care locations that are positioned to meet patients where they are, literally and figuratively.

This also brings challenges. A 75 year-old taking six medications already needs careful monitoring. Then, add in the possibility that this person’s dominant language is Vietnamese, or Arabic, or Tagalog. The pharmacist or pharmacy technician tries, often by speaking English more loudly, to explain the difference between “one pill, three times a day” and “three pills, once a day.” This approach serves no one. Not the pharmacy that bears the liability, not the pharmacist, who wants to provide high-quality patient care, and not the patient, who deserves better treatment.

The Compliance Backdrop 

Another factor: laws and regulations.  Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, recipients of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services federal financial assistance must “take reasonable steps to provide meaningful access to people with limited English proficiency.” In practice, the HHS Office of Civil Rights guidance treats failure to provide meaningful access as a form of national origin discrimination.  Five U.S. states: California, New York, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington (pending) now require pharmacies to provide translated prescription labels to LEP patients.

Without a reliable way to translate prescription labels, even bilingual health professionals are struggling. In community feedback related to Oregon’s dual-language prescription labeling laws, a pharmacy employee commented, “My grandma only speaks Spanish, so we have to translate her English instructions to her ourselves.” A Korean-speaking doctor and public health professor stated that his own sister had been incorrectly medicated by his LEP parents, and that one of his LEP patients landed in the emergency department after a misunderstanding led to an overdose of blood pressure medication.

Why AI-only Translation is Risky 

Automated translation has come a long way. In many cases, an AI-generated translation can provide a general idea of what something says. But prescription labels require more than a general idea. Even in English, vague instructions such as “take once daily” (At what time?) or “Take with water” (How much?) are confusing. Add in an automated translation that’s never been reviewed by a medical translator or bilingual healthcare professional, and you have a high-risk scenario. In fact, prescription labels must comply with strict wording and instructional requirements (in all languages), as specified by the U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) Convention and recommended by the FDA. Examples include:

• Explicit timing: “Take 1 tablet in the morning and 1 tablet in the evening,” instead of “Take twice a day”
• Use of numerals: “2” instead of “two”
• Simple language: avoid medical jargon such as “p.r.n.” and instead say “as needed”
• Instructions directly on the bottle: prescription labels may not say, “Take as directed,” unless the instructions are so long/detailed that they require a separate instruction sheet

The Department of Health and Human Services’ guidance on ACA section 1557 clearly states, “If a covered entity uses machine translation…for critical documents, those translations must be reviewed by a qualified human translator.” Raw AI output is simply too risky, especially given the

reasonable cost of prescription label translation software such as that offered by Language Scientific’s wholly owned subsidiary, RxTran. “Just run it through Google Translate” won’t stand up to an audit, a quality review, or the standard of care that patients deserve, and does not comply with HIPAA and other relevant healthcare privacy laws.

What a Safer Workflow Looks Like 

This is where prescription translation software comes in. A purpose-built application, integrated with your current pharmacy management software, allows you to:

• Provide translated prescription labels in multiple languages, from common (Spanish) to less common (Pashto)
• Ensure that the translations on your labels have gone through a human-reviewed workflow before being printed
• Achieve operational consistency, rather than an ad hoc system where bilingual staff, computer-generated translations, and friends or family members are pressed into service
• Know that your translations are insurer-backed for risk, and have been reviewed by bilingual pharmacy professionals
• Ease the burden on overloaded pharmacists and staff, who no longer serve as informal translators

Important Questions for Pharmacy Leaders to Ask 

Here are six questions to ask about any system you’re considering:

1. Are patients informed that translated prescription labels are available?
2. Is the translated output reviewed by a qualified human?
3. Is the translation system specifically designed for pharmacies?
4. Does the translation provider have documented liability protection and insurance backing? Do they indemnify the accuracy of the translation?
5. Is the translation solution compliant with HIPAA and any other relevant healthcare privacy laws?
6. Can the label translation workflow support large-scale retail pharmacy operations?

The question isn’t whether a prescription label can be translated quickly. It’s whether the translation can be trusted. Language Scientific offers prescription label translation services through our wholly owned subsidiary, RxTran.