It would be much simpler and cheaper to segregate on the basis of sex.
NHS records do not accurately record the sex of patients. They were intended to record sex and where applicable gender [identity] however sex was migrated to the 'gender' data field where it could be altered at the request/demand of patients. This is despite 2009 NHS assessments identifying the serious risks of doing so.
'Sex, Gender & the NHS part 2: Your Medical Record and your Ladybrain'
Anne Harper-Wright
Nov 13, 2018
(extract)
Q: How does the NHS make the distinction between sex and gender on our medical records?
A: They’re supposed to record BOTH.
The NHS is legally obligated to respect a person’s ‘gender identity’, should they declare one. Why? A person’s inner feminine or masculine feelings has no bearing on their medical treatment. It’s because with the advent of the GRA 2004 and the Equality Act of 2010, the law enshrined the concept of gender identity, then gender reassignment, alongside the biological reality of sex. If a hospital is at risk of a lawsuit for failing to acknowledge a person’s protected characteristic of gender reassignment, (which may be solely the declaration of feelings, nothing more) it will capture extra ‘gender’ data to sit alongside the sex data, for those circumstances where a patient feels they have both a sex, and a gender. But the ‘gender’ data should be incremental, added only for those patients who want it. It certainly isn’t and should never be a replacement for bodily sex, not where medical records are concerned. Obviously.
Woe betide a medical system that takes gender affirmation so far as to completely ignore and overwrite sex. Biological sex is immutable, and medical treatment of the sexes differs by necessity between males and females. Male and female anatomy, genetics, reproductive organs, diseases, blood test reference ranges, response to drugs are different. (continues)
The NHS Sex and Gender Standards
After the GRA 2004 was made law, an NHS exercise was commenced, to standardise patient information and data within the various IT systems across the NHS. Within this exercise a suite of documentation was created, dedicated to designing a system architecture that could attempt to cope with the challenges specific to using BOTH sex AND gender as data.
One of the main documents was called the Common User Interface — Sex and Current Gender Input and Display.
The consequences of an NHS mix up between sex and gender were recognised as dire.
“The term ‘Gender’ is now considered too ambiguous to be desirable or safe” (continues)
And the documentation prescribing the architecture of the systems is liberally peppered with warnings about the consequences of conflating the two. Sex and Gender are NOT the same thing, and confusion has serious consequences. (continues)
Having ascertained what the sex fields and gender fields are in our medical records, and having read the NHS documents determining how the data should be entered and used, I was confident that my own personal medical record would reflect the safety guidance. And perhaps look something like the linked examples above:
e.g. Sex = Female, Gender = unknown.
I submitted my Subject Access Request to my local hospital to look at my own medical record data.
And what I found was this.
My personal medical record sex field is BLANK. Unpopulated.
In a disturbing turn of events, the hospital that cared for me in pregnancy and childbirth, twice, doesn’t know what physical sex I am. (continues)
I think the NHS should probably urgently consider that whilst their sex and gender design guidance was exemplary, their execution of it has failed, horribly, and that failure is now exposing patients to actual, physical risk.
The NHS have monumentally screwed up here. There are very real risks to having patient medical records that do not capture sex, but which instead log only purported masculine or feminine feelings, changeable at will, or at the careless keystroke of an administrative assistant or busy healthcare professional. And a field which can be altered and edited easily is a field which exposes a patient to risk. Should sex be easily editable? No, it should be cast-iron locked down, and it should be the field used for every significant clinical application. And it should be sex, not gender that is the measure used to analyse patient outcomes for diseases, treatments. And it should be sex, not gender, that is the characteristic used to segregate wards for privacy." (continues)
medium.com/@anneharperwright/sex-gender-the-nhs-bb86b0c3ebb