Scoop: VCU Health resumes some gender-affirming care for existing youth patients
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VCU Health will resume offering some gender-affirming care for existing patients under 19 but won't accept new patients, Axios has learned.
The big picture: The change aligns one of the state's largest hospital systems with a UVA Board of Visitors decision last Friday, reversing some youth gender-affirming care pauses following President Trump's executive order.
Catch up quick: VCU and UVA Health stopped providing gender-affirming care — including hormone therapy and puberty blockers — to patients under age 19 last month to comply with Trump's order.
- They were among the first in the country to do so as hospitals nationwide grappled with the administration's threat to cut federal funding from any institution providing such care to trans youth.
- Federal judges have since temporarily blocked Trump's order.
The latest: In an email obtained by Axios, VCU Health's senior leadership said gender-affirming surgeries for patients under 19 remain suspended. But they announced that starting Tuesday, the health system will:
- Continue gender-affirming medications for existing youth patients "if appropriate."
- Transfer existing youth patients requiring gender-affirming medication or surgeries to non-VCU Health providers "as soon as feasible."
- Provide "education, counseling, and mental health services" for new patients seeking such care.
What they're saying: "Aligning VCU Health's practices helps to bring consensus and commonalities to patient care in the Commonwealth," the email said.
- It also added that VCU has "significantly increased" the availability of mental health care providers, social workers and counselors to its pediatric facilities and ERs.
In emails obtained by Democratic state Sen. Danica Roem before the Tuesday decision, VCU Health doctors wrote about "anticipating a large spike in children who are in acute mental health crises," reported the Virginia Mercury.
- Frank Petruzella, division chief of emergency pediatric medicine, emailed colleagues saying they should "develop a contingency plan for how best to help these children."
VCU Health spokesperson Danielle Pierce declined to answer Axios' questions about whether the goal is to eventually move all existing patients under 19 seeking gender-affirming care out of the hospital system.
- She instead referred Axios to the Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU's site for information.
- The resolution the UVA Board of Visitors passed regarding trans youth care, which VCU is largely mirroring, says UVA supports referring current patients out to providers "less susceptible to the significant legal and funding uncertainties facing the University."
Between the lines: Gender-affirming care can include counseling and other mental health services.
- It's also supported by major medical organizations like the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association, which consider such care lifesaving.
- Drugs like puberty blockers are temporary and reversible and used for both trans and non-trans youth who experience early onset puberty.
Karri Peifer contributed to this report.