Tyson Edwards idt that works… sex and gender aren’t necessarily the same

Alyssa correct, but right now we don’t have a sex field so are you using the gender field for sex currently?

Tyson Edwards I am using the gender field and added another question for pronouns. I’m not submitting claims or doing anything that might require biological sex. I think that info is what is required on the CMS 1500 form.

Tyson Edwards no issues for me

Tyson Edwards Please don't. This would create an administrative nightmare for me. Please simply create a new field for sex that includes male, female, and intersex.

Okichie Davis, LPC, LCPC, ACS, NCC and keep it blank?

Tyson Edwards Yes, just have it set to blank by default, the same as any other incomplete fields in a new chart.

If Gender = Male, Sex = Male. If Gender = Female, Sex = Female. Otherwise, blank.

Alyssa: Right. Instead of forcing our customers to update the "Sex" field for each and every patient, (lots of clicks), the idea is to automatically populate Sex only if there is a likely match for Gender.

If Gender = M; Sex = M

If Gender = F; Sex = F

If Gender equals anything else; Sex = "blank"

That being said- we recognize that Gender and Sex are not always the same, and customers will have to go in and manually update patients where 1) Gender is Male, Sex is Female (or vice versa) and 2) where Gender is anything other than Male or Female.

We hope this results in much less work for our customers, as nothing will need to be done for those where Gender = Sex.

Okichie Davis, LPC, LCPC, ACS, NCC: Hi- our plan for the Sex field is indeed to have: Male, Female, Intersex, and "blank" options. We would only populate the Sex field in the event that a patient/client has a Gender of "Male" or "Female". Otherwise, Sex would be left blank.

We know that those with a Female/Male Gender will not always map to a Female/Male Sex. But, the thought is we'll greatly reduce the burden of manual updating Sex. Instead of doing it for each an every patient, you'll only have to update where there is a Gender of M/F that doesn't match Sex. Also, the new "Sex" field is used for insurance claims and erX, so we were concerned with the risk of leaving it blank until folks have the time to update Sex for each and every patient (lots of clicks).

Tina Koro (IntakeQ) IMO, doing it this way is actually more cumbersome. Both fields are needed and should function independently of each other. Male and Female are not genders so they should not be listed under the gender field at all; they should only be listed in the sex field. Leaving the sex field blank for now does not cause that much of an issue since the system automatically prompts to update sex if it is missing.

Okichie Davis, LPC, LCPC, ACS, NCC Appreciate the feedback. Since so many practices use varying terminologies for Gender (many use Female/Male instead of Man/Woman) it's hard to get this right for everyone. We'll be looking into what we can do to make the auto-population of the new Sex field optional.

Just a note, though- the new Sex field won't be a "required" field, meaning, it can be left blank. So there won't be any prompt to update Sex if it is missing for a patient.

Okichie Davis, LPC, LCPC, ACS, NCC Alyssa Update: This is releasing very soon! We are going to be giving each customer the option to either have the system automatically update the new Sex field if there is "M" or "F" in Gender; otherwise blank), or leave Sex blank. The option to update the new Sex field will be available on-demand via a message that will pop up in PQ.

Tyson Edwards Legal Sex - would be great to have all the options (M,F, unspecified) for insurance claims and Rx's. Gender - would be great to have the options already there, but also patient /provider able to write in, or select more than one. Sort of like check box options.

Tyson Edwards For my clients my preference would be that the sex field that is used for claim creation should be clearly marked as "For Insurance Purposes".

So when the patient fills in the gender field, they are offered the opportunity to fill in the "For Insurance Purposes" sex field, and if they decline, have the gender field auto populate the sex field.

Tyson Edwards male, female, intersex

Tyson Edwards As a prescriber who doesn't file insurance claims, the only way we could properly prescribe was to have the Gender field be the legal sex and then add a custom gender identity field in the profile to match the gender identity.

That means, for our use, the field currently called "Gender" should be used to populate the new field (Legal) "Sex" because that's how we had to structure it from the start for prescribing to work.

Tais Hoelzinger thank you