Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Tuesday, October 27, that the nation’s first detransition clinic has opened at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) in Houston.
The clinic stems from a settlement that Paxton, Texas Attorney General, reached with Texas Children’s Hospital in May and finalised in August. His office began investigating the hospital in 2023. That same year, Texas passed Senate Bill 14, which prohibits transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapies.
Under the settlement, TCH will pay $10 million to resolve state and federal fraud claims. Paxton’s office alleged that the hospital improperly billed Texas Medicaid for gender-transition treatments. The hospital also agreed to prohibit the procedures and amend its bylaws so that any physician who performs them loses medical staff privileges. It also agreed to permanently revoke the privileges of five doctors, including three current and two former staff members.
At the time, TCH said it had complied with all applicable laws and settled the case to close a legal chapter it described as “wrought with falsehoods and distractions.”
According to Paxton’s office, the clinic will provide detransition-related medical care to patients up to age 21, and detransition-related obstetric and gynaecological care to patients over 21.
A TCH spokesperson said the clinic will offer a range of services, including endocrinology, surgery, primary care, fertility counselling, psychiatry, psychology, social work, case management, and speech pathology. Care may be delivered at multiple locations within the hospital’s existing licensure and scope.
In August, the Trump administration announced it would stop funding gender-transition surgeries for minors through Medicaid.
In a statement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton hailed the settlement and clinic opening as a “resounding defeat for the radical gender ideology.” Former Texas Children’s Hospital nurse Vanessa Sivadge, whose whistleblower lawsuit helped prompt the case, received nearly $2 million under the settlement.
Under the settlement, TCH must fund the clinic’s services for its first five years at no cost to patients and publicise the clinic on its website. The hospital says the clinic is operational and complying with the agreement.
A TCH spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the hospital is “actively triaging prospective patients” through its established intake process. The hospital said clinical appointments had not yet begun at the time of publication. TCH says the clinic formalises multidisciplinary services it already provides and will continue to offer.
Original source: https://cw39.com/the-cw39-houston/texas-childrens-opens-detransition-clinic/
