Tracy McCreery
Barnes-Jewish Hospital (BJH) was the single Missouri entity that filled out the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Healthcare Equality Index (HEI) the year before. But according to the HEI, they only had two protections out of 7, yet when we looked online, we could find evidence of 5 protections out of 7. But before we go further, let me explain the seven different HEI components for 2012 (they added one more in 2013).
Healthcare Equality Index from Human Rights Campaign
1a. Patient Bill of Rights and/or nondiscrimination policy includes “sexual orientation”?
1b. Ditto “gender identity”?
1c. [added in 2013] Nondiscrimination is conveyed to patients in at least two accessible ways?
2a Explicitly inclusive visitation for same-sex couples?
2b. Ditto same-sex parents?
3a. Equal employment opportunity policy includes “sexual orientation”?
3b. Ditto “gender identity”?
4. Provide cultural competency training?
Luckily BJH has an office on diversity, inclusion and equity- so since the new HEI survey was open, we started calling this office to see who could fill it out, and hopefully add the additional protections we found online in the mix too. The process took longer than we’d thought. We found a liaison in the office who could fill out the HEI survey, but HRC reported that they’d filled out the same responses as the year before (thanks Shane!). It took several meetings and a series of calls, and even then, the HEI deadline almost passed and they still hadn’t entered their updates. To make things even more complicated, we were looking up protections assured by their parent company, BJC HealthCare, which had a great LGBT nondiscrimination policy which initially appeared to apply to all subsidiaries… but after meeting with Barnes-Jewish Hospital — they said it did not apply. (And to make things even more complicated, now the page with the parent corporation protections has been taken down. ← were we imagining it?)
Eventually our persistence paid off and BJH filled out the survey reporting five of the now eight categories as yes. They might have been a different five than we first thought, but the point was now one hospital system in the St. Louis region was firmly establishing itself as a leader among the pack for LGBT protections!
But at the same time PROMO was working with BJH, a private hospital, SAGE was working diligently with the largest public healthcare system in the area, Cochran VA Medical Center. Read more about that journey in our next case study.
LGBT HealthLink, The Network for Health Equity 