First posted on Instagram
Texas Children's Hospital in Houston has opened the country's first detransition clinic, a multidisciplinary clinic for patients who previously underwent gender-transition interventions, under a settlement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that requires the hospital to fund the clinic's services for its first five years so patients receive care at no cost.
"In accordance with my settlement with Texas Children's Hospital, the nation's first-ever Detransition Clinic is now open," Paxton said. "I will continue to ensure that this clinic provides the care and support that victims of the radical left's gender ideology deserve."
The clinic offers detransition-related medical care to patients through age 21, along with detransition-related obstetric and gynecologic care to patients older than 21. Its services include endocrinology, surgery, primary care, fertility counseling, psychiatry, psychology, social work and case management, and speech pathology, and because the care is multidisciplinary, patients may receive services at different Texas Children's locations depending on their needs.
The clinic was a central requirement of the settlement Paxton secured with Texas Children's in May and fully executed on August 5. Under it, the hospital paid $10 million to resolve claims brought under the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act and the federal False Claims Act for billing Texas Medicaid for gender-transition interventions the attorney general's office called unallowable and illegal, with $8,576,000 of the payment going to the State of Texas. The settlement also compelled the permanent and irrevocable termination of privileges of multiple physicians and requires the hospital to amend its bylaws so that performing gender-transition interventions triggers automatic relinquishment of medical staff privileges. The hospital has said it broke no law and settled to escape prolonged and costly litigation, and the settlement records no admission of wrongdoing.
The investigation followed whistleblower disclosures by Vanessa Sivadge, a nurse in the hospital's endocrinology clinic, who said physicians were billing Medicaid for pediatric gender-transition procedures. Sivadge, who later founded Protecting Texas Children, said she was thankful to Paxton and her attorneys for getting the clinic open, and wrote that she was thinking of "all the detransitioners who have suffered in silence, been dismissed, and fought desperately to have their voices heard."
The opening is likely to intensify the debate over transgender health care for minors: supporters of restrictions emphasize safeguards and accountability for hospitals, while opponents argue that treatment decisions should be made by qualified clinicians together with families, based on individual medical needs. The clinic is now listed on the hospital's website, where patients can find information about its services.