There are many different companies offering sign language services. If you are looking for services after normal business hours, you may find difficulty in securing an interpreter if you are only working with local agencies. It can be hard to consider outsourcing work to a larger national company to fill your needs, but many times this is helpful as they may have a different pool of interpreters they work with. Also many VRI companies will have their video remote interpreting service staffed 24/7 so you can use these services at any time you may need them.
There are still problems, when trying to setup services for some. If you know you are going to need an interpreter late at night or very early in the morning, you may be able to schedule one with your local ASL agency if you call during the day time, but what if you call them at 2:30 AM?
Most companies are not open twenty four hours a day, this means any urgent need cannot be taken care of.....unless. Unless you contract with a high quality video remote interpreting service. Some of the companies providing such a service offer an on demand usage. This means, hospitals can just open up a session on a tablet or laptop and instantly connect to a live interpreter without needing to schedule the appointment at all!
After hours interpreting can be a hard service to secure, but if you reach out to a few reputable companies offering Video Remote Interpreting, you will be sure to find one that can accommodate these type of needs. Make sure that you have an opportunity to test these services, before you need them in a live working environment. This will let you make sure that your hardware is up to snuff and you will also be able to assure that the video is high quality and that it will meet the deaf individuals needs. You don't want the first trial of new equipment or software to happen while a patient is going through triage in ER or any other mission critical situations!
