Advocacy groups say that restrictive health records could hurt the health of LGBTQ+ people
Groups that support LGBTQ+ people are asking governments to add more gender and sexual identities to their electronic health record systems.
The groups say that health record systems haven’t kept up with the changes in how gender and sexuality are understood.
They want Health Canada to take the lead on making more data fields to capture the range of gender and sexual identities. They say this would help gender-diverse people have better health outcomes.
It comes after a report called “Seeing Us as We Are” was released on Tuesday by the Community-Based Research Centre in Vancouver.
The center’s knowledge translation manager, Cameron Schwartz, said, “We don’t really have a good way to capture data that reflects a nuanced understanding of gender right now.”
“We want to make a system so that health care providers feel comfortable talking about these topics and then handling those kinds of talks.”
The report says that restrictive health records can cause transgender people to be deadnamed or given the wrong gender. This can happen, for example, if they switch health care providers and their records are not updated properly.
Schwartz said, “A lot of people don’t get care because they don’t feel that clinical interactions reflect who they are and value who they are.” “Part of it is working to make spaces safer for people that don’t assume they’re cisgender and straight.”
Identity relevant to clinical car
Alex DeForge, who is in charge of programs at the LGBTQ+ non-profit Qmunity, said that when someone walks into a clinic, gender-based assumptions are often made that could have a big impact on the care they get.
“That often means, for example, that queer men don’t get throat swabs or rectal swabs because it’s assumed that they have sex in a certain way,” they told CBC News.
“That’s a situation where knowing that person’s real name, for example, is very important for clinical care.
“Without that information, we really risk missing sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which would then continue to spread in the community.”
DeForge says that more diverse gender and sexual identities in electronic health records could also help health care workers plan better for vaccination rollouts.
They said that any changes to how records are kept should be paired with efforts to educate clinical staff.
CBC News asked for a comment from a Health Ministry spokesperson, but they didn’t answer right away.
But they pointed to recently released guidelines for collecting gender-based data that say it’s important to make sure data practices don’t discriminate based on gender identity.
The standards say that B.C. authorities shouldn’t guess a person’s gender based on their sex at birth, and that people’s identities should be protected.
Schwartz says he hopes the discussion about more complete health records spreads beyond the province and that B.C. is a “leader” in this area among the provinces.