June 20, 2024 | Net Health
6 min read
Become a Healthcare Ally: Create a Positive Rehab Therapy Experience for LGBTQ+ Patients
We talk about the importance of creating optimal patient experiences throughout all areas of healthcare—how creating these positive experiences can increase compliance and improve patient outcomes while enhancing your bottom line—but it’s important to remember that achieving this is an active and ongoing process.
It’s a process that requires continued and honest reflection as you consider how you and your clinic’s staff might better serve populations that have long been maligned and misunderstood by medical providers. Populations like the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) community, for example, fall into this category.
Recent studies have shown that people who identify as LGBTQ+ are more likely, for instance, to delay or avoid healthcare needs altogether based on past negative experiences or the feeling they may be unfairly mischaracterized or judged by practitioners and staff.
Consider these statistics:
- 22% of transgender adults have delayed or avoided medical care, while 29% have been refused medical care based on their actual or perceived gender identity.
- 8% of all LGBTQ+ people—and 14% of those who had experienced discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity over the last year have avoided or postponed necessary health care because of disrespect or discrimination from healthcare providers and staff.
- Larger numbers of LGBTQ+ patients, nearly twice the number in many cases, report having had negative experiences with their providers compared with non-LGBTQ+ adults.
- Discrimination experienced by LGBTQ+ people has been associated with higher rates of psychiatric disorders, substance abuse, and suicide.
To help improve these statistics and ensure equity in healthcare, providers across the spectrum must strive to offer a healthcare experience that’s both inclusive and affirming to those who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community.
What does this look like?
In honor of Pride Month, we’d like to offer you some ideas, and a few resources, for making your outpatient healthcare clinic—be it a rehab therapy facility or a private practice wound care clinic—more inclusive to people who identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Be Proactive While Avoiding Common Missteps
For many LGBTQ+ people, having a positive experience at a healthcare facility begins and ends with simply feeling included and accepted.
This may seem easy enough, but trust can be a delicate thing … especially in healthcare.
Outright slurs, personal criticisms, or acts of discrimination should never be tolerated by patients or clinicians, of course. However, it’s often the more innocent mistakes and oversights that cause patients and doctors to become uncomfortable and even defensive.
Making seemingly safe assumptions about gender identity, family makeup, or sexual orientation, for example, can cause a patient to clam up, perhaps causing them to hold back information that may be important during assessments and treatments. Such incidents can also cause patients to cancel future appointments and delay further care altogether.
To avoid such missteps, strive to develop a clinic environment that’s more inclusive to the LGBTQ+ community. Consider the following suggestions.
Appoint a Champion of LGBTQ+ Health Equity
Any commitment to lasting change requires involvement from leadership, owners, managers, C-suite directors, etc. That’s why the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center recommends all LGBTQ+ health equity initiatives begin with the appointment of at least senior manager to take on the role of “champion” of the facility’s inclusion efforts.
“The leadership champion sets the tone for the entire staff by announcing the new initiative, explaining the goals and rationale for creating more welcoming environments, and scheduling all in-staff introductory training on LGBTQIA+ health,” the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center stated in its “10 Strategies for Creating Inclusive Health Care Environments for LGBTQIA+ People” packet. “These strategies help to raise awareness and create ‘buy-in’ among staff.”
Additional steps this champion can take involve:
- Administering a facility/clinic-wide survey assessing current practice and service gaps related to LGBTQ+ patients.
- Creating an LGBTQ+ inclusion task force comprised of clinicians and staff members representing multiple departments.
- Serving as the main liaison between the task force and senior leadership, helping lobby for important initiatives that improve patient well-being.
Create a Welcoming Environment
As with any group that has a history of experiencing discrimination, many LGBTQ+ people are quick to notice signs they’ve entered a “safe space,” even within the walls of your clinic. Such signs may include:
- A visible nondiscrimination policy positioned at the check-in desk or prominently displayed in the waiting area.
- Available unisex restrooms.
- Literature or marketing materials featuring diverse images and language.
- Health education materials developed specifically for LGBTQ+ people.
- Rainbow flags, pink triangles, posters announcing LGBTQ-related events or observances, and other symbols typically associated with inclusiveness.
“Consider the virtual spaces that patients visit, as well, such as your website and social media fees,” the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center suggests.
Use Inclusive, Gender-Neutral Language
Both when speaking with patients and creating patient intake forms, language matters. Strive to use language that’s both inclusive and gender-neutral so you can better relate to the realities of those who identify as transgender patients or part of the LGBTQ+ community. Some examples include:
- Instead of marital status, consider asking for relationship status with options for “married,” “partnered” and “other.”
- Ask for the preferred names and preferred pronouns of patients. Some transgender people may not identify with the name/gender on their official IDs or insurance cards.
- Follow the patient’s lead by using specific language and labels they use for themselves.
Expand Your LGBTQ+ Knowledge
According to the Human Rights Campaign, more than 20 million adults in the U.S. identify as LBGTQ.
With a population this big, it can benefit you and your staff—and ultimately your patients—to educate yourself about these members of your community and the health disparities and difficulties they face in healthcare as well as in society. From a professional’s perspective, the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center offers free CME/CEU credits for healthcare professionals, including access to live and on-demand webinars and learning modules.
In addition to research, get to know local organizations that advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and other maligned populations. From them, you can better learn about community resources that may complement and/or boost patient wellness efforts.
Market Directly to LBGTQ+ Communities
Making healthcare more inclusive for people of all experiences and walks of life is simply the right thing to do. Everyone deserves the chance to live a life of optimal health, and you as medical professionals play a key role in helping people achieve this goal.
Marketing-wise, this is a wonderful message to convey in and of itself. But, when you’re considering marketing and engagement efforts during Pride Month and beyond, don’t be shy about taking this message directly to your local LGBTQ+ community.
A recent Community Marketing & Insights survey provides some statistics showing LGBTQ+ people appreciate companies and organizations that speak directly to them. The annual survey concluded that:
- 73% of respondents agreed with the statement, “I am more likely to purchase from a company that outreaches and advertises to the LGBTQ community.”
- 81% of respondents agreed with the statement, “I think more positively about companies that sponsor LGBTQ community organizations and events.”
In other words, don’t shy away from your local LGBTQ+ community, and certainly don’t simply assume they know they have your support. Just as with most any patient engagement effort in health care, creating positive experiences is often about the little things that make patients feel welcomed, accepted, and cared for.
And it’s about respecting your patients by learning, listening, and striving to more fully understand the hurdles that have kept them from accessing health care or seeking healthcare in the past.
To explore this topic in more detail, start with the ebook “Providing Inclusive Services and Care for LGBT People,” a comprehensive guide put together by the National LGBT Health Education Center.