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BACKGROUND Many health care providers do not provide adequate language access services for their patients who are limited English-speaking because they view the costs of these services as prohibitive. However, little is known about the costs they might bear because of unaddressed language barriers or the costs of providing language access services. OBJECTIVE To investigate how language barriers and the provision of enhanced interpreter services impact the costs of a hospital stay. DESIGN Prospective intervention study. SETTING Public hospital inpatient medicine service. PARTICIPANTS Three hundred twenty-three adult inpatients: 124 Spanish-speakers whose physicians had access to the enhanced interpreter intervention, 99 Spanish-speakers whose physicians only had access to usual interpreter services, and 100 English-speakers matched to Spanish-speaking participants on age, gender, and …