The poor health care services treating and caring for those who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHOH) worldwide remains an unsolved issue in both developing and developed nations (Kuenburg, Fellinger, and Fellinger, 2016). In the United States (US), a developed country, cardiovascular disease (CVD) rank as the number one killer in the US and disproportionally impact DHOH more than the unhealthy Americas (American Heart Association, 2015; Mckee, Mckee, Winters, Sutter, and Pearson, 2014; Pick, 2013). The difficult issue of health care is due to communication barriers that defeat the DHOH individuals …show more content…
The millions of DHOH suffers translated to be 15% to 20% of the US population are not able to receive adequate health care (Blackwell et al., 2014; Pick, 2013). In the percentage, more than 2 million are profound American Sign Language (ASL) user of which are even at greater risk (Pick, 2013). As it stands, the US spend over $2.1 billion annually on taking care and treating DHOH patients, which often result in mistreatment, wrong medical diagnosis, and increasingly accidental death among DHOH patients (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2015). Such account for increasingly higher hospitalization re-admission rates among DHOH patients (CDC, 2015). Moreover, giving no consideration to the lack of ASL interpreter to promote communication due to medical facilities lack the ability to pay for interpreters as a result of no exchange of medical services reimbursement to provide DHOH with interpreters (Bhattacharya, 2013; CDC, 2015; Kangovi & Grande, 2011). Hence, particular attention is called to implement and alleviate DHOH healthcare barriers (Pick,