A 75-year-old Henrietta woman who is deaf and legally blind claims she was repeatedly denied a sign-language interpreter while being treated at Highland and Strong Memorial hospitals.
University of Rochester Medicine operates both facilities and claims to provide 24-hour availability of American Sign Language interpreters.
But Teresa Battisti alleged in a federal lawsuit this week that emergency department and other hospital staff ignored her requests or told her it would be an hour or even the next morning before an interpreter would arrive.
“Imagine that you're going to the emergency room, and you can't see for all intents and purposes, and you can't hear, and you have no idea what's going on,” said Melinda Fithen, litigation director at Empire Justice Center, which is representing Battisti.
“You are waiting, you're in pain,” Fithen continued. "You don't understand what's being explained to you about your medical care, and just generally are unable to communicate.”
State and federal law require that businesses and other service providers provide reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities. Battisti's lawsuit seeks a court order requiring changes in hospital policies, practice and employee training. That includes providing notice to patients about their right to effective communication. She also is seeking unspecified financial damages, and a jury trial.
A legal right to equal access
Rochester is home to one of the largest deaf populations per-capita in the world. And recent lawsuits filed by Battisti’s co-counsel Andrew Rozynski out of New York City, have raised similar claims against local law enforcement agencies. But Fithen and other experts agree that while no formal accounting exists, the most common complaints about non-compliance are against physicians and hospital systems.
Battisti had to rely on written notes, a voice-to-text app on her iPhone and, in one instance, a friend who is not a certified ASL interpreter. She also tried to read lips, the lawsuit states. None are acceptable in critical interactions for a person whose first language is ASL, experts say. Battisti has been deaf since birth.
In a statement, a spokesperson for UR Medicine said officials could not comment on the specifics of the lawsuit, which is standard with ongoing litigation.
“However,” the statement continued, “University of Rochester Medicine can assure the community that both hospitals take every reasonable step to ensure clear two-way communication between patients and their care teams, including patients and families who need ASL interpretation.”
Battisti’s lawyers, though, describe a different outcome. Not only did the communication barrier affect Battisti’s ability to participate in her own medical care, they said, it also left her feeling anxious about future medical visits.
“Deaf-blind patients deserve and have the legal right to effective communication with their healthcare providers,” Fithen said, defined legally as equal access to care. “And in several instances here, Ms. Battisti was denied that right.”
In one instance, detailed in the lawsuit, Battisti was brought to the Strong emergency department by ambulance in June 2023 with severe stomach pains.
She provided a written note stating her need for in-person interpreter, but allegedly none was provided. She tried voice-to-text on her phone, which is described as ineffective in part because the technology "routinely fails to accurately capture Ms. Battisti’s spoken words,” the lawsuit states.
Battisti received an IV, had X-rays taken — both without explanation — and when an ASL interpreter did arrive to inform her she was being discharged, “the ASL interpreter informed Ms. Battisti that they would have to leave in five minutes to meet with another patient,” the lawsuit states. She then sat in the waiting room for several hours, unable to hear when cab drivers twice arrived and called her name.
A broader issue
In addition to ER visits and one trip to the urgent care, the lawsuit also points to a scheduled 2024 mastectomy in which Battisti claims she was provided an interpreter before surgery but denied one while in post-op recovery.
All instances occurred in the past three years.
Each time, she relayed her need for an in-person interpreter, and records show notations were made in her patient records, according to the lawsuit. When she later complained, the lawsuit states, hospital officials admitted either that nobody had paged an interpreter, or the interpreter was working at a different hospital than the one she visited.
On more than one occasion, Battisti’s lawsuit states, hospital nurses and doctors offered an on-demand video option called Video Remote Interpreting — despite her limited vision — offering her a tablet or other mobile device.
At Highland, a nurse noted that Battisti “refused to use interpreter iPad stating she cannot see the person on the screen due to her poor eye sight,” the lawsuit states, quoting from the patient record. But there is no record that anyone paged an in-person ASL interpreter.
As for why hospitals and physicians tend to draw the most complaints for non-compliance, Fithen blamed inadequate policies and training — and, possibly, funding — but added: “The hospital is required to provide them with the same level of effective communication that they do to those patients who are hearing and seeing.”
Howard Rosenblum, former CEO and director of legal services for the National Association of the Deaf, had a more pointed assessment when speaking to WXXI News in 2024 about a similar complaint against Brighton Police. He said at the time that it was medical providers and then lawyers who were the subject of the most complaints.
“You can't bill a service for a patient or a client back to them,” he said, adding that interpretive services are not covered by insurance. “You have to absorb that cost of doing business. And these professions are not accustomed to paying out of pocket for things. And so it’s difficult for them to adjust to this kind of posture that the law requires.”
