Doctors in Boston have rejected a controversial move by the city’s largest hospital to cut assessment time in half for transgender children seeking life-changing medical interventions.
Boston Children’s Hospital has reduced the time for in-person assessments from four to two hours, after which doctors can recommend treatment to children, including puberty blockers and hormone medications.
“I think that’s crazy,” Laura Edwards-Leeper, the former chief psychologist at Boston Children’s gender clinic, told the Boston sphere.
But others say the shortened assessments were necessary because of the gender clinic’s increasing workload in recent years.
“We were able to get all the information in a lot less time,” clinic co-director and psychologist Kerry McGregor testified during the trial, according to the Globe.
The assessment policy, which was implemented in 2018, is once again under scrutiny in a discrimination case that exposes the inner workings of the gender clinic.
Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper (pictured), the former chief psychologist at the Boston Children’s Gender Clinic, said the two-hour time frame is “crazy” and “worrying.”
In 2018, Boston Children’s Hospital reduced the time for in-person assessments from four to two hours, after which doctors can recommend treatment to children, including puberty blockers and hormone medications, according to a new lawsuit
Former clinic research director Amy Tishelman, 68, filed the lawsuit this year, claiming staff discriminated against her based on her gender and age before firing her in retaliation for the charges she filed against them.
Boston Children’s Hospital has hit back, saying Tishelman’s claims are false and that she was fired for a breach of privacy. “The hospital cannot comment on pending litigation,” a representative told the Globe.
Tishelman’s lawsuit also puts a spotlight on the in-person review policy, as she had been working on research into what the long-term effects of cutting the sessions would be if she were fired.
She claims the hospital did not have enough data on long-term outcomes to safely implement the policy, which she called “reckless.”
“The recommendations needed to go beyond just a simple increase or decrease, yes or no for medication,” she said, adding that the treatments could have major consequences for children later in life, including making them infertile.
The doctor said she and at least one other psychologist, Peter Hunt, disagreed with shortening the length of the analyses.
McGregor confirmed at trial that the in-person assessment time was four hours when she joined the clinic in 2016, but in 2017 or 2018 it was half that.
“Some weren’t happy about it,” she said. “I thought it was appropriate.”
“Seeing our kind of growing patient population, it made sense to make that time more efficient,” McGregor added, according to the Globe.
‘We can always ask for more time. … It’s quite rare. But I could do it if I need to.”
The Supreme Court agreed to rule on the legality of a Republican-backed Tennessee ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors
A giant trans flag is unfurled outside the Supreme Court during the Court’s earlier hearing in a case over LGBTQ rights. The Biden administration asked the court to take up the new case after a lower court upheld a ban on surgeries and treatments in Tennessee
Edwards-Leeper told the Globe that the two-hour assessment time was “very concerning” because it is “simply not possible” to adequately analyze a child in that time.
The psychologist said she designed a protocol that would last 20 hours, including about five hours of personal time with the patient and their parents.
Major issues surrounding transgender care will play out on the national stage at the Supreme Court after justices decided to rule on the legality of a Republican-backed ban on gender-affirming care for minors in Tennessee.
The justices were appealed by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration of a lower court’s decision upholding a ban on medical treatments, including hormones and surgery, for minors experiencing gender dysphoria in Tennessee.
The court will hear the case during its next hearing, which started this month.
The challengers argue that banning care for transgender youth violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees equal protection and due process, by discriminating against these adolescents on the basis of gender and transgender status.
They add that banning care also undermines parents’ fundamental right to access and make decisions about their children’s medical care.
Republican-led states have passed numerous similar measures in recent years that target medications or surgical interventions for adolescents with gender dysphoria — the clinical diagnosis for significant suffering that can result from an incongruity between a person’s gender identity and the gender that defines him or her. assigned to her at birth.