Making a Difference for Pride Month
As we celebrate Pride Month in June, I want to share how Houston Methodist is working to provide clinically appropriate and culturally considerate care for the LGBTQIA+ community.
One of the best ways to accomplish this is to ensure we have standard Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) questions completed as a part of each patient’s medical record. These key questions are already embedded within Epic, through MyChart (for eCheck-in), registration demographic screens and a SOGI form accessible by clinicians from Storyboard. (Click here for a tip sheet that covers these questions).
Why it matters:
Much like collecting race and ethnicity data for our patients, SOGI information allows us to identify potential health disparities and ensure we’re making sound clinical treatment decisions based on all pertinent information.
This is also the first step in improving the health of our LBTQIA+ community. As an example, a patient may be legally listed as a male, but was assigned as a female at birth (AFAB). Physiologically, this means additional clinical considerations or testing may be needed for appropriate and safe care.
Myth busting:
Although many health care workers assume patients will be offended by SOGI questions, according to the National LQBTQIA+ Education Center, this is rarely the case. Healthcare facilities actually find very few patients complain about SOGI questions and are more likely to answer them compared to those about income.
How we are doing:
While we collect a patient’s legal sex 100% of the time, our numbers are far lower for SOGI questions. Looking at patients with office visits, procedures or other hospital encounters over the last six months, we collected gender identity 29% of the time, sex assigned at birth 27% and sexual orientation only 21% of the time.
How you can help:
Becoming familiar with the SOGI questions and incorporating them into your patient care workflows is a great next step. To help you, review the SOGI information provided by the LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center
Here are some other specific things you can do:
1. Encourage patients to complete the SOGI questions online through the MyChart eCheck-in process.
2. If the SOGI questions aren’t completed, be sure they’re asked during the registration process.
3.Before procedures and treatments, double check that patient information like gender identity and sex assigned at birth are completed and correct.
Everyone deserves the best possible health care experience we can provide, so thank you for your support to ensure we’re treating the whole patient.
