Finding a doctor who speaks Vietnamese is not a matter of convenience. It is the difference between nodding along at an appointment and actually understanding what is happening to you — or to a parent sitting beside you who has lived in Maryland for thirty years and still would rather discuss a diagnosis in Vietnamese.

Montgomery County has a real, if under-advertised, bench of Vietnamese-speaking providers: an internist in Rockville who covers everything from the annual physical to the nursing home and hospice, a family physician on Research Boulevard, a dentist born in Vietnam who trained at the top of his class at Maryland, and a pediatric dentist who grew up in Rockville and came back to treat its children. Below is our curated, regularly updated list, organized by what you actually need.

Bạn thích đọc bằng tiếng Việt? Đây là danh sách các bác sĩ và nha sĩ nói tiếng Việt tại Quận Montgomery, Maryland — bao gồm nội khoa, y học gia đình, nha khoa tổng quát và nha khoa nhi. Nếu bác sĩ chuyên khoa của bạn không nói tiếng Việt, Quận Montgomery có thông dịch viên y tế tiếng Việt miễn phí đi cùng bạn đến cuộc hẹn.

Why language-concordant care matters

“Language-concordant” care — when patient and physician share a language — is consistently linked to better outcomes: patients understand their diagnoses more clearly, follow treatment plans more reliably, ask more questions, and report higher satisfaction. Federal health agencies treat language access as part of quality care, not a courtesy: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health publishes the National CLAS Standards for culturally and linguistically appropriate services, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality ties limited-English communication to a measurably higher risk of medical error.

The gap shows up most in the conversations that carry the most weight. A medication list read back correctly. A colonoscopy prep followed exactly. A decision about whether an 80-year-old father should be admitted, or cared for at home. Those are the moments where a shared language stops being a preference and starts being clinical.

Vietnamese-speaking primary care & internal medicine

Internists are adult primary-care specialists — the doctor who manages blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, and the accumulating complexity that comes with age. It is a relationship measured in decades, which is exactly why the language it happens in matters.

  • Dr. Truong Bao, MD — a Vietnamese-speaking, board-certified internist at Montgomery Medical Group on Molecular Drive in Rockville, and the Director of Montgomery Medical’s hospital practices. University of Maryland–trained (magna cum laude at College Park, MD with honors in Baltimore) with residency at George Washington, Dr. Bao practices across an unusually wide span: office primary care, geriatrics, hospital medicine, nursing home care, and palliative care. For a family caring for an aging parent, that means the same Vietnamese-speaking physician can follow the case from the exam room to the hospital to whatever comes after — instead of starting over with a stranger at each transition. Listed as an independent clinician in the Johns Hopkins Medicine provider directory.

New to choosing an internist? Our guide on how to choose a primary care doctor in Bethesda walks through what to look for.

Vietnamese-speaking family medicine

Family physicians care for the whole household — children, parents, and grandparents — under one roof. In multigenerational Vietnamese families, that is often the practical choice: one doctor, one office, one language.

  • Dr. Teresa L. Hoang, MD — a Vietnamese-speaking, board-certified family physician on Research Boulevard in Rockville with more than two decades of experience caring for patients of every age. Ross University–trained, with privileges at Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center. She accepts new patients and offers telehealth, and her prevention-first approach and whole-family scope make her a natural fit for households where a parent, a teenager, and a grandparent all need to be seen.

Vietnamese-speaking dentists

Dental work is a category where miscommunication gets expensive. The difference between a filling, a crown, and an implant — and the difference in cost between them — is precisely the kind of explanation that should not be happening in a second language under fluorescent light.

  • Dr. Thy B. Nguyen, DDS — a Vietnamese-born, Vietnamese-speaking general and cosmetic dentist at Crown Dental Care on Chapman Avenue in Rockville, near the Pike District. He earned his DDS at the University of Maryland Dental School, graduating at the top of his class, and completed an additional residency in advanced general dentistry in Baltimore, where he was elected chief resident and received the Harry W. Dressel Jr. Award for clinical proficiency and total patient care. That extra hospital year is the reason he keeps complex restorative work — implants, root canals, full-mouth cases — in house rather than referring it out. He carries a 4.93 out of 5 overall rating on Zocdoc.

Vietnamese-speaking pediatric dentistry

Pediatric dentists complete two to three additional years of residency devoted solely to children — behavior guidance, sedation, growth and development, and the care of kids with special health care needs.

  • Dr. Minhthu V. Phan, DDS — a board-certified pediatric dentist and co-owner of All Star Pediatric Dentistry on Hungerford Drive in Rockville, across from Rockville Town Square. Born in Saigon, she moved to Rockville at nine and graduated from Richard Montgomery High School before earning her DDS at the University of Maryland’s Baltimore College of Dental Surgery — where she received the pediatric dental award for service to underserved children — and returning there as chief resident in pediatric dentistry. She is a Diplomate of the American Board of Pediatric Dentistry, and her training covers conscious sedation and medically complex children. Her office staff is fluent in Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish, and Chinese, so scheduling and insurance conversations happen in the same language as the clinical ones.

Planning ahead for braces? See our guides to children’s orthodontics in Montgomery County and how much braces cost in Maryland.

Just upcounty: Gaithersburg and Germantown

Our directory covers Bethesda, North Bethesda, Rockville, Potomac, Chevy Chase, Cabin John, and Silver Spring, but two Vietnamese-speaking primary care physicians practice just past that line and are worth knowing about if you live upcounty:

  • Dr. Stephen T. Nguyen, MD — a board-certified internist in Gaithersburg with roughly 25 years of experience caring for adults in English and Vietnamese, affiliated with Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center. His office is at 4 Professional Drive, Suite 133, Gaithersburg, MD 20879.
  • Dr. Quoc Anh Nguyen, MD — a family physician in Germantown, born in Vietnam, board certified by the American Board of Family Medicine and practicing in English and Vietnamese. His office is at 12800 Middlebrook Road, Suite 400, Germantown, MD 20874.

We list these two without full profiles because they sit outside our covered areas. Verify details with each office directly.

If your specialist does not speak Vietnamese

Not every specialty has a Vietnamese-speaking option nearby — there is no Vietnamese-speaking cardiologist or oncologist we can currently point you to in Montgomery County. Two things fill that gap.

First, ask for an interpreter and expect one. Health care providers that receive federal funding — which includes essentially every hospital and most large practices in the county — are obligated to provide language assistance at no cost to you. You should never be asked to bring your own interpreter, and you should never be put in the position of having a child translate a diagnosis for a parent.

Second, Montgomery County runs its own program. The county’s Asian American Health Program, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, provides trained multilingual medical interpreters — Vietnamese among them — who physically accompany residents to medical appointments and help them navigate the health care system. For a complicated specialist visit, that is often better than a phone line.

Johns Hopkins Medicine also publishes language assistance resources in Vietnamese for patients in its system.

How to choose

Once you have a shortlist, the same fundamentals apply as for any provider:

  • Confirm board certification in the specialty you need — not just a medical or dental degree.
  • Check insurance participation directly with the office, not just the insurer’s directory, which is frequently out of date.
  • Ask specifically who speaks Vietnamese — the physician, the hygienist, the front desk, or all three. A practice where only the doctor speaks Vietnamese still leaves scheduling and billing in English.
  • Verify new-patient availability and wait times, especially for primary care.
  • Match the location to your life. Most of the providers here are within a few miles of each other along Route 355 in Rockville, which makes consolidating a family’s care realistic.

To browse more options, see our primary care & internal medicine, family medicine, and dentistry directories, plus our Rockville, North Bethesda, and Bethesda doctors pages. If you are looking for care in another language, we also maintain guides to Amharic-speaking (Ethiopian) doctors and Spanish-speaking doctors in the area.

We update this guide as we verify more Vietnamese-speaking doctors, dentists, and specialists across Montgomery County. If you are a Vietnamese-speaking provider who should be included, or a patient with a recommendation, we would love to hear about it.