You are invited! Please join the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Region 9 San Francisco Human Trafficking Workgroup for a Human Trafficking Programs and Services Webinar which will be held on Wednesday, May 27, from 2:30 - 4:00 PM (PDT).

To register, click on the following link: https://eventbrite.com/event/16854188331/

Attached are two public comments that will be submitted to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) on Friday May 29th promoting actions they can take to increase sexual orientation and gender identity (SO/GI) data collection in Electronic Health Records.  

The Fenway Institute and the Center for American Progress have worked closely with colleagues at the Mayo Clinic and the National Partnership for Women and Families to analyze the proposed rules that CMS and ONC published March 30th and to develop community comments in response.

CMS's proposed Stage 3 rule says nothing about SO/GI. This is a major missed opportunity, and inconsistent with all the steps HHS is taking to increase SO/GI data collection on health surveys. It also ignores calls by the Institute of Medicine and the Joint Commission for inclusion of SO/GI in Meaningful Use. Our comment asks CMS to explicitly require the collection and use of SO/GI data in Stage 3 Meaningful Use.

CMS Comment Letter

ONC's proposed health IT certification requirements call for creating a module to collect SO/GI data, but this will be optional, not mandatory. We are asking ONC to require that EHR vendors include SO/GI fields as part of the Demographics criterion and in the Common Clinical Data Set. Other demographic data-including race/ethnicity, language, age, sex-are required, but SO/GI is not.

ONC Comment Letter

Please sign on here by close of business May 28th

Make sure you have approval from your organization's leadership to sign on.