As of June 9th, the 950 hospitals and clinics connected to the Veterans Health Administration are all required to provide the same level of adequate and sensitive healthcare to transgender veterans. These health care centers will not be providing sex reassignment surgery, but WILL connect veterans to counseling, hormone therapy, and post-operative care as a regular occurrence. Personnel at these centers are also required to refer to all transgender and intersex patients, in conversation AND in medical records, using their preferred gender pronouns rather than their assigned sex pronouns.
A lot of these standards sound like common sense to us, but they’re a big deal to the transgender veterans affected by the new protocol. According to some online testimonies, some transgender veterans receiving care through the Veterans Health Administration have been able to pursue hormone therapy, while others are denied even basic, non-trans-specific healthcare. This new standard means that ALL health care centers, clinics, and hospitals will provide a higher standard of care to transgender veterans. You may cheer a little if you like.
** Side note: I’d usually accompany this type of post with a news article, but the one I saw contains language that is questionable at best and has actually inspired me to write a letter to the author (but more on that later). I googled for an alternative, but none are immediately apparent. You can search yourself, but I won’t promote an article insensitive to the identities of the people it reports on. **
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment