Major medical companies are using state law and medical records software to advance gender ideology among children and keep their parents in the dark about their so-called “transitions.”
Electronic health records (EHR) are not just tools that streamline visits to the doctor’s office or present the doctor and patient with an easily-digestible overview of patient health, medications, and appointments.
Using state laws to limit “proxy” access to parents, health systems deploy these EHRs as a conduit to hide attempts at childhood “gender transition” from parents, often starting transgender interventions on children as young as 12 or 13 years old.
According to a new report from Do No Harm (DNH), EHR companies across the country limit and advocate limiting parental access to their children’s health records around 12 or 13, often using state laws passed years ago with the purpose of blocking parental access to medical records related to sexually transmitted disease (STD) testing and treatment or treatment for substance abuse.
“Confidentiality regulations are being used to hide aspects of pediatric medical transition, such as social transitioning and preferred pronouns of the child, as well as medications, from parents and guardians,” Michelle Havrilla and Dr. Kurt Miceli wrote in the report. Havrilla is a certified registered nurse practitioner, report co-author, and DNH director of programs for gender ideology.
Miceli, DNH medical director and report co-author, told The Federalist on a call Monday that those laws were passed with the idea that teenagers were unlikely to seek treatment for STDs and substance abuse if they had to go through their parents.
“The intent behind many of these laws was, we as society would rather have that adolescent feel comfortable and seek treatment for the sexually transmitted infection, for the substance use disorder, that they may have — we’d rather have them come seek treatment than go untreated because they might be fearful of their parent finding out,” he said.
But doctors and medical companies obsessed with transitioning children have found those laws — both at the state level and through the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) — to be a useful way to secretly start transitioning children with zero knowledge from parents.
“It appears that healthcare systems are using sexually transmitted infections, mental health concerns, and drug and alcohol exceptions to remove parental access to their child’s entire medical record — well beyond the limits of the law,” Havrialla and Miceli wrote.
Two prominent companies that provide EHR software to hospital systems are also adamant about pushing gender ideology on children, including in their questionnaires prompts asking children to provide their preferred pronouns, their sex “assigned” at birth, and which gender they claim to identify with.
Asking those kinds of “social transition” questions — regarding gender identity, pronouns, and sex “assignments” — is a potent tool used by predatory activist doctors and others pushing transition on children to point them toward irreversible medical interventions like puberty blockers, hormone replacement, chemical castration, and eventually genital mutilation surgeries.
Those companies, Epic and Oracle, control about 63 percent of the EHR market, with Epic holding 41 percent and Oracle holding 22 percent. Many Americans are familiar with MyChart, which is a product of Epic.
Epic is not really hiding the ball either. In an article on its website titled “More Inclusive Care for Transgender Patients Using Epic,” the company states, “Many Epic community members have incorporated questions about patients’ preferred pronouns, sex assigned at birth, and gender identity into each patient’s chart in Epic. … A transgender patient’s sex assigned at birth — along with the patient’s current anatomy — might inform clinical decisions, while their legal sex might be relevant to identifying them in billing workflows.”
Oracle also has an article on its website called “3 Ways Organizations Can Advance Gender-Affirming Healthcare,” noting that EHRs should be “more inclusive.” Oracle sets its proxy restrictions at 13 years old by default.
The kinds of confidentiality laws being exploited by the hospital systems, and facilitated through the EHR platforms, do not just exist in states run by Democrats.
For example, Florida’s Lakeland Regional Health uses Oracle (Cerner) to cut parents out of their children’s medical records as soon as the child turns 13. “If Cerner proxy access was granted prior to age 13, it will go away once the patient turns 13. To request proxy access, the child must call 863.687.1100, ext. 2299 to authorize access for their parent/guardian,” Lakeland’s website states (emphasis added).
University of Florida Health uses Epic and requires that parents request proxy access to their children’s health records after they turn 12.
Wellstar Health System in Georgia (which uses Epic), significantly limits parents’ ability to access their child’s health records once the child is 12 and, like Lakeland, requires that the child authorize parental access.
In 2023, Children’s Hospital of New Orleans used Epic to do the same, according to the Washington Examiner, nearly succeeding in pushing a vulnerable 13-year-old girl, who already had evidence of harming herself, to “transition.”
According to the DNH report, Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., gave a 13-year-old a survey during an unrelated emergency room visit asking, “What sex were you assigned at birth, on your original birth certificate?” The survey also prompted the child to provide “pronouns,” giving “She/Her/Hers, He/Him/His, Ze/Hir/Hirs, They/Them/Theirs, No Pronouns, No Preference, Not Listed” as options.”
The survey also bizarrely interjected a note that “Sex or sexual intercourse can mean different things to different people and people can have sex with others of the same or different gender,” before asking, “In your entire life, what, if any kind of sexual contact have you had? (select all that apply): Penis in vagina, Vagina on vagina, Anal, Oral, I have never had sex, I prefer not to answer.”
Parts of the survey were done with parents present, while others were not, according to DNH.
“While these institutions make a questionable attempt to be transparent with their proxy access policies, the concept of allowing a 13-year-old decision making capacity is counter to what we understand about a developing adolescent brain,” the report states. “Adolescents simply do not have the cognitive capacity to make these difficult decisions.”
The report ends with a call to action, noting that parents should be guiding their children through medical decisions, particularly if the children face confusion because of gender ideology and are in a vulnerable place because of that confusion.
Miceli said part of the goal is to thread the needle on limiting the scope of the confidentiality laws to their original intent, which, for better or worse, is to encourage young people to seek medical treatment for things like substance abuse or STDs — though they often extend to prescribing contraception as well.
These laws were never intended, however, to create a system where 13-year-olds can make irreversible, life-altering decisions at the behest of predators.
Read the full article here
