GNYHA hosted a symposium last week on best practices for serving lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) patients. Christina Cordero, PhD, MPH, The Joint Commission’s (TJC) Division of Healthcare Quality Evaluation Project Director, shared TJC’s recommendations for meeting LGBTQ-related accrediting standards, reviewed how hospitals can meet the standards by following TJC’s 2011 Field Guide, and addressed questions from hospitals about implementing the guide’s best practices.
Dr. Cordero shared recommendations for meeting LGBTQ-related accrediting standards
A panel of representatives from Kaleida Health, NYU Langone Health, and Northwell Health shared their adopted best practices by describing one LGBTQ-friendly criteria on which system hospitals were evaluated by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. Hospitals in these systems are among the GNYHA member institutions that achieved the Foundation’s 2018 LGBTQ Healthcare Equality Index Leader designation for 2018. Other areas discussed included patient nondiscrimination policies, staff training, transgender-affirming care, and sexual orientation and gender identity patient data collection.
The panel shared adopted best practices
The symposium marks the launch of a learning series on LGBTQ-affirming best practices. Events in the learning series will drill down on issues discussed at the symposium, and focus on employee nondiscrimination polices and caring for elderly LGBTQ patients. Materials from the symposium can be found here.