This information standard provides the mechanism for recording the sexual orientation of all patients/service users aged 16 years and over across all health services and Local Authorities with responsibilities for adult social care in England for the purposes of compliance with the Equality Act 2010.

In this standard, sexual orientation is taken to mean: the stated physical and emotional attraction a person feels towards one sex or another (or both). Monitoring of sexual orientation will help to ensure that:

• care providers and commissioners are able to demonstrate that there is equitable access for lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals;
• care providers and commissioners have an improved understanding of the impact of inequalities on health and care outcomes for LGB populations;
• policy makers, care providers and commissioners can better identify health risks at a population level.

This will support targeted preventative and early intervention work to address health inequalities for LGB populations, thereby reducing expenditure linked to treatment costs further down the line. The standard has been based on research conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), and on current practice by those organisations which monitor sexual orientation.

Developers of information standards, data collections and data extractions (ISCE), including NHS Digital, must assess impact and build in requirements as appropriate to the next release of their individual ISCE.

Health services and Local Authorities with responsibilities for adult social care in England must ensure that where sexual orientation data is recorded in Health IT Systems (outside of national ISCE), those systems must use the question and response codes set out in the Requirements Specification.