Rush gets perfect score in HRC index

The Human Rights Campaign ( HRC ) has released its Healthcare Equality Index ( HEI ) 2009-and Chicago's Rush University Medical Center was the only Midwest facility to achieve a perfect score.

According to the index, the survey "aims to educate healthcare policymakers and LGBT healthcare consumers to get rid of barriers and biases that keep us from taking care of ourselves and each other." It focused on five policy areas: "patient non-discrimination, visitation, decision-making, cultural competency training and employment policies and benefits."

Among other findings, the HEI revealed a huge disparity in care regarding gender identity and sexual orientation. Less than 7 percent of participating facilities protect patients from discrimination based on gender identity, while almost three-quarters of the respondents provide protections based on sexual orientation.

Brad Hinrichs ( pictured ) , Rush's vice president of hospital operations and administrative vice president for transformation, said that he was "very pleased by [ the score ] . We knew it was going to happen because, a couple years ago when we first participated, we didn't have a 100-percent score. We did our due diligence to make up for what we were lacking. Other hospitals haven't been proactive in making sure that the nondiscrimination policies included language related to gender identity or expression. We already had sexual orientation mentioned as a protected class."

Hinrichs also spoke about the lack of respondents. ( Only two hospitals from Illinois responded, with the other being Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center. Illinois Masonic lacked one qualification: an equal-employment opportunity policy that included "gender identity or expression" or "gender identity." ) "What I suspect is that, even though there weren't that many hospitals that [ participated ] , there isn't a lot of blatant discrimination out there relative to this," he said. "I'd like to think that my fellow hospital execs also try to be respectful of people, in particular transgender [ individuals ] . But it does take some extra work to formalize it in your policies and do those educational things with your staff. I think it'll come with time."

He added that even though Rush scored perfectly in this index, that does not indicate that the work is over. "We know that we have the right policies and practices in place, but like any other place we need to do more to make sure our employees and people who come in contact with patients have the right kind of education and sensitivity training, especially regarding transgender individuals," said Hinrichs, who is openly gay himself.

Hinrichs said that the facility even includes an affinity group, LGBT@Rush .

The HEI-which rated 166 hospitals nationwide this year-is a collaboration of the HRC Foundation and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. To view the index, visit www.hrc.org/hei .