The UK’s National Health Service requires patients to choose from 159 religions, 12 genders and 10 sexual preferences before accessing health care, according to The Telegraph.
The questions are asked when patients register on online portal MyChart to access their hospital appointment details, test results, medical records, and outpatient appointments.
‘Gender identity’ options include genderfluid, questioning, agender, non-binary, demiboy, demigirl, male and female.
‘Sexual preferences’ include pansexual, bisexual, gay, heterosexual, lesbian, queer, questioning, unsure, asexual, or a combination.
‘Sex assigned at birth’ or ‘legal sex’ offers male, female or indeterminate.
Critics said the data collection was bizarre and intrusive, and confusing for those being asked if they are a Goddess, Satanist, or Druid before they access care.
Think tanks said the NHS is ‘playing identity politics’ in perplexing ways.
The system was introduced at Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, in October 2023.
A male patient in his 50s said: ‘If I am having a heart stent fitted, what difference does it make if I am straight, pansexual, male or demiboy?’
A campaign group for over-60s said ‘This is wokery to the nth degree. Why on earth does the NHS need to know whether someone is a bisexual Methodist before an outpatient hospital appointment is made?
‘People will feel obliged to answer all the questions so that there are no obstacles to them getting an early appointment, but this questionnaire is more complex and intrusive in some ways than the Census.’
Lottie Moore, of the think tank Policy Exchange, said it’s crucial for healthcare that hospitals know the sex of their patients.
Moore said that so many dubious identity options will likely be detrimental for the elderly and for those whose first language isn’t English.
The portal, run by Epic, an American health software firm, introduced ‘sex assigned at birth’, ‘legal sex’, and ‘gender’ after one of its software developers, a transgender woman, received a hospital letter addressed to her as ‘Mr’.
[Photo: NHSRainbowFlag on X @RainbowNHSBadge]