Deaf Patients Sue Laurel Regional Hospital

See this article by that title in today's Washington Post. The first couple of grafs:

A federal lawsuit filed this month contends that Laurel Regional Hospital violated the rights of its deaf patients by not having sign language interpreters available during medical consultations and claims that several deaf patients were harmed by faulty communication with hospital emergency room staff members.

"Patients were forced to communicate through cryptic notes or lip reading," according to the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt. "Even the best lip readers, in an ideal one-to-one situation, have been found to understand only 26 percent of what is said."