June is Pride Month, and it’s a great opportunity to reflect on how we can ensure access to culturally competent behavioral health care for all. Quartz wants to ignite the power to create a life well-lived for everyone in our communities. To help our LGBTQ+ members better access care that’s the right fit for their specific needs, we have added new options to our provider search tool.
Accessible and culturally competent behavioral health care can be hard for LGBTQ+ people to find. In a survey in Behavioral Health News, 42% of nearly 3,000 LGBTQ+ people surveyed indicated that community fear and dislike of LGBTQ+ people was a problem for them in accessing healthcare; 39.8% reported that there are not enough professionals who are adequately trained and competent to deliver healthcare to LGBTQ+ people.
Lack of access to mental health care was cited by 35.3% of LGBTQ+ respondents. For those who do seek care, fear of culturally incompetent care leads many LGBTQ+ individuals to avoid disclosing their sexual orientation, which can make treatment more challenging.
We want to ignite the power to create a life well-lived for all – everyone in our community deserves the same high level of care. To help our LGBTQ+ members better access care that’s the right fit for their specific needs, we have added new options to our provider search tool, our “Find a Doctor” platform. This tool now has added functionality to make it easier for LGBTQ+ members to identify culturally competent behavioral health providers! We have added “Areas of Focus” for behavioral health providers in Find a Doctor. Under the “Areas of Focus,” members will now be able to search for treatment interests related to behavioral health providers, which means that our members can search for specific areas of interest, including LGBTQ+.
Using the “Doctors by Specialty” search, members can search through either “Specialties,” or “Areas of Focus.” Members can then filter their results by specialty—such as behavioral health—and then use the “More Filters,” option to narrow down the search to the specific treatment interests (Areas of Focus) they are looking for by filtering the areas of focus. A list of focus areas will be displayed to select from. We are very excited about this added functionality, as we believe it will help all our members find the provider that can best meet their needs. This new option is a big step in ensuring that everyone has access to the same services for a balanced life – a life well-lived.
