HealthIT Answers November 9, 2021
By Steven Posnack, M.S., M.H.S. Deputy National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
In a field like health care where precision can mean saving a life, one irony I often reflect on is how unclear we’ve been about “sex” and “gender.” Among many anecdotes, this includes at times putting the prefix “administrative” in front of each to inexplicably constrain the meaning in ways that are rarely universally understood.
While this may seem like a whole lot of hullabaloo, disambiguating (I play SCRABBLE®) the meaning, context, and expected use of sex and gender identity can have substantive quality and safety impacts on a person’s care. This ranges from missing preventative screening notifications to inaccurate reference ranges on lab tests all the way...
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