Beyond Pride: The importance of healthcare inclusivity for the LGBTQIA+ community

Pride month is an opportunity to reflect upon the inclusivity of the healthcare we provide, the health plans we offer and the benefits available to our workforce. Are the services and information we supply applicable to all types of families? All sexes? All genders? How can we create inclusive, equitable healthcare experiences that address the needs of every individual and/or family?

Gallup; Harvard T.H. Chan; National LGBTQ Task Force

As our population continues to see an increase in people who openly identify as LGBTQIA+, we have a responsibility to make healthcare inclusive for all. Becker’s Healthcare reports that more than half the members of the LGBTQIA+ community indicate they have faced discrimination in a healthcare setting.

There are opportunities for improvement across the entire healthcare ecosystem. In this piece, we’ll focus on the three opportunities we think are most relevant for providers, payers and employers. 

Inclusivity by design

Creating an inclusive healthcare experience means taking a second look at every step of the consumer journey whether it’s in-person or online.

WAYS TO IMPROVE LGBTQIA+ IN-PERSON CARE:

• Hire diverse teams that design with minority populations in mind
• Community engagement programs
• Staff education on LGBTQIA+ issues and training
• Use inclusive language on intake forms and when speaking to patients
• Inclusive restroom policies that are clearly posted

When it comes to online experiences, a first step toward providing equal access to care and information is investing in a CX platform. By making it easy to access and navigate the ecosystem, these platforms aim to eliminate friction from the healthcare experience and guide consumers through every stage of their health journey. This is particularly relevant to LGBTQIA+ communities that already have barriers to entry and increased difficulty navigating healthcare systems.

Just like with any other healthcare technology solution, it’s important to understand the ability for bias to creep in during the platform build process. Designers are most likely to create experiences that fit their personal needs and this can create inherent biases in a final UI/UX. In order to offer a truly equitable healthcare experience, design inclusivity should be top-of-mind during a platform build, with checks and balances in place to ensure the needs of every population are addressed. 

WAYS TO IMPROVE LGBTQIA+ INCLUSIVITY IN DIGITAL HEALTHCARE EXPERIENCES:

• Ensure to visually represent people of all gender identities and relationships
• Offer the option for users to select their pronouns
• Provide gender options beyond male and female
• Allow users to go by their chosen name, not their legal name
• Hire diverse teams that design with whole population representation in mind

At League, inclusivity by design has always been a top priority. Learn more about how to promote user inclusion for LGBTQIA+ consumers.  

Better access to healthcare information 

Access to healthcare information is a social determinant of health that can no longer be ignored. It’s critical for providers, payers and employers to improve their data collection when tailoring personalized experiences for diverse populations. For example, gathering data on sexual orientation and gender identity can help healthcare organizations better identify the needs of LGBTQIA+ users. If the right data is not being collected, the needs of these users will remain unknown and unaddressed.

It’s also critical for patients, plan members and employees to understand their healthcare information. For many people, important health and safety information is readily available and easy to access from medical professionals and reliable sources online. However, for many minority groups, like the LGBTQIA+ community, this information is often not as accessible.

As a healthcare community, we need to improve access to medical information from trusted, reliable sources for all the diverse groups that make up our population. 

Improving access to care via plan design

Given the role of insurance in our healthcare system, we must also consider the role that plan design can play in driving inclusivity. How can we design plans to support the LGBTQIA+ community?

As part of League’s commitment to increasing access to care for diverse groups, we have implemented industry-leading LGBTQIA+ benefits for our employees, which include:

• Extensive parental leave for all types of parents (including adoptive)
• Fertility spending account
• Transgender benefit coverage with travel suport
• Adoption spending account for all types of families
• Coverage available for all spouses, partners and significant others

Working together to improve LGBTQIA+ health equity

All of these actions are vital to creating a more equitable healthcare experience for members of the LGBTQIA+ community. When patients, members and employees feel welcomed and supported, they are more likely to seek out the care they need and in turn improve their long-term health outcomes.