We Are Everywhere!

Does it seem like that there are more trans people coming out than ever before? Well you’re right. More trans people are having surgery than we have in the past.

U.S. Gender Confirmation Surgery Up 19% in 2016, Doctors Say
NBC Out
By REUTERS
May 22, 2017

Editor's Note: Reuters has withdrawn this story because of questions surrounding the data supplied by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Gender confirmation surgeries rose 19 percent in 2016 from the previous year, a survey of plastic surgeons said, an increase some doctors attribute to expanded Medicare coverage and greater social acceptance of transgender people.

But less than 0.5 percent of those procedures involved the genitals, according to the survey of 703 doctors released on Monday by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
[…]
He attributed the increase to a 2014 decision by Medicare to end a blanket denial of coverage on gender transition related surgery and to changing societal attitudes toward transgender people and more positive images of them in the media.

The society publishes an annual statistics report on all types of plastic surgery and began reporting gender confirmation surgery for the first time this year.

They reported 3,256 surgeries, of which 54 percent were performed on male-to-female patients, or transgender women, and the remainder on female-to-male patients, or transgender men.

I think that as the article says, insurance coverage is probably one of the reason for the increase but I also think it because trans people feel safer in coming out during the timeframe of the study.it should be interesting to see if it declines with the Trump administration.

Another factor might be…

More U.S. Hospitals Offering Gender-Affirming SurgeriesNBC Out
By Dawn Ennis
October 31, 2016

A boon is underway at medical institutions from coast to coast, aimed at helping transgender Americans who suffer gender dysphoria because of the mismatch between their bodies and their gender identity.

Gender-transition services and surgeries are becoming more widely available across the nation, and more insurance companies are adding coverage to help the more than one million Americans who identify as transgender.
[…]
The Cleveland Clinic, Boston Medical Center, Oregon Health and Science University in Portland and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City are among the latest medical centers to provide gender-affirming procedures.

"At Mount Sinai, we are offering the full array of services for transgender people regardless of whether they have already accomplished their transition," Zil Goldstein, a nurse practitioner and program director at Mount Sinai's Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, told NBC OUT. "We want people to know that these treatments are available, and also that our staff are prepared to serve and care for the transgender community with sensitivity."

This month an institution with a controversial history regarding transgender health care added its name to the list: Johns Hopkins Medicine. Johns Hopkins made history in 1965 as the first academic institution to offer gender-affirming surgeries, but it stopped in 1979 and never resumed. However, in a letter posted earlier this month, it reaffirmed its "commitment to the LGBT community" and announced it will resume gender-reassignment surgeries in 2017.

Also here in Connecticut the Yale/New Haven Hospital is also offering GCS surgery and Middlesex Hospital is offering trans care, they have added APRNS for endocrine care.

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I just got back from a weekend in Provincetown on Cape Cod as part a Connecticut Outreach Society trip that I lead up there for their members.

More to come, right now I just want to recuperate from the weekend and the four hour drive home.