Collecting personal and sensitive data on patients — including their sexual orientation — is important; however, it may take physicians' time away from health-focused questions, writes Dr. Ann Robinson, a London-based general practitioner, in an op-ed for The Guardian.
The National Health System England recently rolled out a program that requires health professionals to record patients' sexual preferences based on the rationale that lesbian, gay and bisexual patients experience inequalities in health and social care, Dr. Robinson writes.
Although Dr. Robinson says she has no problem asking these questions and collecting this data, she argues it takes away from the 10 minutes of face-to-face time she gets with her patients. On top of that, physicians are bombarded with a number of other distractions — EHR alerts and reminders to ask about flu symptoms, smear tests and blood pressure checks — so it feels as if they are interrogating patients and not addressing their original health concerns that drove them to make the appointment, she added.
"I don’t want to have to fire a load of questions at you. I don’t want to spend the few minutes we have together in a data collection exercise," writes Dr. Robinson.
If EHRs were more advanced, patients could input this data themselves, she argues. Providing patients the option to document their sensitive data from the privacy of their own homes makes the clinic a place to receive the care they originally sought out, she writes.
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