Local hospitals more likely to protect sexual orientation than gender identity, says HRC
According to a report issued this week from the Human Rights Campaign, a vast majority of American hospitals don’t have regulations in place to provide LGBT patients with equal rights, although far-reaching changes are on the way.
HRC’s 2010 Health Equality Index, released last week, found that 93 percent of the nation’s largest hospitals do not have patient nondiscrimination policies inclusive of gender identity, while 42 percent don’t include sexual orientation.
In April, President Obama issued a memorandum mandating that all hospitals receiving Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements — the majority of American health facilities — must treat same-sex partners of patients who have power of attorney or another legal designation as immediate family members, granting them equal visitation privileges as heterosexual spouses and participation in healthcare decision-making. The new rules also stipulate that hospitals cannot deny visitation based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
In addition to Obama’s directive — which gave the Department of Health and Human Services six months to make recommendations about the implementation of the rules — the Joint Commission, the nation’s largest hospital-accreditation agency, recently announced new LGBT-inclusive regulations for accreditation.
The commission convened an expert panel to analyze its policies and which produced new standards that include a stipulation that accredited hospitals must prohibit patient discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.
“The Joint Commission’s vision is that all people always experience the safest, highest-quality, best-value healthcare across all settings,” the commission said in a statement. “These standards are an important step toward meeting our mission to continuously improve health care for all.”
The HEI study looked at a representative sample of 200 of the nation’s largest health care facilities to analyze the protections in place for LGBT patients.
Eight Pennsylvania facilities were included on the list, all of which had policies inclusive of sexual orientation but not gender identity. They include Philadelphia’s Albert Einstein Medical Center, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University Hospital, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland, Lancaster General Hospital, Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown and UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh.
In addition, the report evaluated 178 hospitals that voluntarily completed surveys about their LGBT policies.
Tom Sullivan, deputy director of the HRC Foundation Family Project, noted that, since the survey was voluntary, most of the facilities included had policies that were more inclusive than some of those in the representative sample.
Nearly 94 percent have employment policies that ban sexual-orientation discrimination, while 52 percent also prohibit gender-identity discrimination. About 84 percent reference sexual orientation in their patients’ rights statements, and about 30 percent also extend protections to patients based on gender identity. Just over half of the hospitals have LGBT cultural competency training for employees, and about a third of the respondents have policies to provide equal visitation access for same-sex couples and same-sex parents.
Two local hospitals — Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania — responded to the survey, although neither was among the 42 facilities rated as a “Top Performer.”
Both CHOP and Penn include sexual orientation in their patient nondiscrimination policies. CHOP offers LGBT staff training and has an employment nondiscrimination policy inclusive of sexual orientation, while Penn’s employment nondiscrimination statement includes both sexual orientation and gender identity.
Sullivan said the policy changes are especially momentous when considering the results of the HEI.
He said that, although some hospitals attempt to provide fair and equal treatment to LGBT patients, without specific stipulations on the books and training in place, their efforts are often unsuccessful.
“There are constant reports of people with bad experiences in emergency rooms and many times they’ll be in places where hospitals are known to be good to the LGBT community,” Sullivan said. “Without the language, there is some gray area. When a hospital says they treat everyone the same, they may be well-intentioned, but the gold standard has to be explicit and include language.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].