For the third year in a row, 19 Bay Area Kaiser Foundation hospitals were ranked amongst the nation’s leaders in health care equality for their lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender patients, according to a report released last month by a national LGBT civil rights organization.

In its fifth year administering the survey, the Human Right’s Campaign Foundation considered hospital policies that protect patients and employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation, in addition to ensuring equal visitation for same-sex couples and training staff to deal competently with LGBT health issues. Kaiser’s performance was considered along with that of 87 other hospital systems in 375 facilities through out the United States.

Kaiser’s Oakland Medical Center was one of the facilities that received perfect scores. “We’re not surprised at this recognition,”  said Dr. Jennifer Slovis, Assistant Physician-in-Chief at Kaiser Medical Center in Oakland. “It’s in our DNA. Our physicians have always been committed to the highest quality of health care for all of diversities of populations.”

The nationwide index found that only 49 percent of the hospitals that participated had visitation policies that granted equal access for same-sex couples. Similarly, 52 percent granted same-sex parents equal visitation rights for their children.

“The beauty of a report like this is that it drives other institutions to make sure that they enact non-discriminatory policies and to train their physicians to treat LGBT patients no different than any other person walking through that office door,” Slovis said.

With headquarters in Oakland, Kaiser Permanente is one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health plans serving 8.8 million members through their 35 hospitals, 454 medical offices, and a health insurance plan that covers over 3 million people in Northern California alone.

Tiffany Woods, a male-to-female transgender person, applauds Kaiser’s recent high marks in LGBT health care equality. She’s the program coordinator and co-creator of TransVision Tri-City Health Center in Fremont, the only such program serving transgender women in Alameda County. Woods also serves on the advisory council at UC San Francisco’s Center for Excellence in Transgender Healthcare, a national organization that provides medical facilities with research related to transgender health care issues.

She and her wife used Kaiser’s fertility care in Fremont to help conceive all three of their children through in vitro fertilization. They were their doctor’s second-ever trans couple, but Woods said that didn’t affect the quality of care and compassion they received. “They became like family,” Woods said about Kaiser’s staff and physicians, who even attended their daughter’s first birthday party.

Wood’s wife gave birth to all three children—who were conceived using sperm from the same sperm donor—at Kaiser Hospital in Fremont. From the fertility clinic to the hospital, Woods said, “We never encountered one problem that would even be construed as discrimination or homophobia.”

But that’s not always the case in other health care settings. Last year, Lambda Legal, another national LGBT civil rights organization, released a report on the health care experiences of LGBT people and people living with HIV. Nearly 56 percent of LGB respondents and 70 percent of transgender patients reported that they had experienced some form of discrimination while accessing health care.