LGBTQ+ individuals, like all people, deserve comprehensive, accessible, high-quality health care delivered by practitioners and providers they can trust. Accurate and trustworthy SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identify) data—along with other demographic data such as race, ethnicity and primary language—is the cornerstone of efforts to innovate and improve care delivery, identify and overcome barriers to equity, train service providers, evaluate the effectiveness of interventions and participate in research that improves both population health and individual patient outcomes.
This issue brief discusses long-standing protections for patient or member data, including SOGI data, provided by HIPAA and a 2024 final rule from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services clarifying health care and health insurance nondiscrimination protections.