"Lack of Gender Recognition"

Dear sambarc43,

I am sorry to hear of the challenges you and your child experienced with our systems. Eastern Health is committed to being an inclusive health service and we are committed to improving our information systems to reflect the needs of our patients.

At this stage, for a number of reasons we are required to record each person's name as stated on their Medicare Card. We are however working with relevant stakeholders to improve our ability to record preferred names. This has been challenging as many systems are interlinked and individual patient identification is essential for continuity of patient.

Over the last 12 months, we have made improvements in this area. We now have the ability to record gender as well as sex in our Patient Administration System. We also have the ability to record the title ‘Mx’ in our administration system if a patient wishes to be known by that title.

I am pleased to hear that individual staff have been helpful and have been able to apply the principles of inclusion and gender diversity.

I am sorry that we are not able to immediately resolve this issue but please know we are working on it.

If there is any way we can provide further assistance to you and your child, such as providing a link to the process to change names with Medicare or checking our systems to ensure your child’s details are recorded as accurately as technically possible, please contact one of our Patient Relations Advisers in the Eastern Health Centre for Patient Experience either by calling 1800 EASTERN or by emailing feedback@easternhealth.org.au.

If you choose to call please be aware that it is possible that the Patient Relations Advisers may be on another call at the time you ring and if so you will be invited to leave a message so they can return your call.

Thanks,

Gayle Smith

Executive Director, Quality, Planning and Innovation