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The Opportunity for Medical Systems to Reduce Health Disparities Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Patients

  • Systems-Level Quality Improvement
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Abstract

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people experience a variety of health care disparities, including higher rates of certain chronic illnesses, substance abuse, and HIV. The growing adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) presents an important opportunity to optimize care for LGBTI individuals by routinely capturing in structured form patient sexual orientation and gender identity (SO/GI), as well as a patient’s preferred name and pronoun. In addition to improving care provided to LGBTI patients, collection of structured SO/GI information will facilitate important public health data collection efforts that can be used to further reduce health care disparities in this underserved population.

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Funding

This work was funded in part by the Vanderbilt Program for LGBTI Health, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vanderbilt Program for LGBTI Health, Nashville, TN, USA

    Cameron Donald & Jesse M. Ehrenfeld

  2. Vanderbilt Department of Anesthesiology, Nashville, TN, USA

    Jesse M. Ehrenfeld

  3. Vanderbilt Department of Biomedical Informatics, Nashville, TN, USA

    Jesse M. Ehrenfeld

  4. Vanderbilt Department of Surgery, Nashville, TN, USA

    Jesse M. Ehrenfeld

  5. Vanderbilt Department of Health Policy, Nashville, TN, USA

    Jesse M. Ehrenfeld

  6. Vanderbilt University Program for LGBTI Health, 1211 21st Avenue South, Nashville, TN, 37212, USA

    Cameron Donald

Authors
  1. Cameron Donald
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  2. Jesse M. Ehrenfeld
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Correspondence to Cameron Donald.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Systems-Level Quality Improvement

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Donald, C., Ehrenfeld, J.M. The Opportunity for Medical Systems to Reduce Health Disparities Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Patients. J Med Syst 39, 178 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-015-0355-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-015-0355-7

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