By Laurel Duggan
Daily Caller News Foundation
Doctors in the United Kingdom will be paid extra for each patient they help medically transition to the opposite gender, according to the Times.
To address high rates of long-term physical and mental health problems of transgender people and improve their rate of satisfaction with the National Health Service (NHS), doctors in the English county of Sussex will be paid approximately £178 extra per year for each adult to whom they prescribe cross-sex hormones, and roughly £91 for each transgender patient to whom they give an annual health checkup, the Times reported.
The new incentives aim to provide “interim support” to patients on the gender clinic waitlist and to improve access to hormonal treatments, but is not intended to promote hormone therapy, according to a document obtained by the Times.
Referrals for gender identity clinics have risen 240% over the past five years, and one clinic is offering first appointments to patients referred to them as early as 2017, the Times reported.
If you are a trans man or a non-binary person with a cervix aged 25-64, you are eligible for cervical screening.
You can arrange to be screened with your GP practice or a local sexual health clinic. For more info: https://t.co/LCjzeeGWbY#CervicalScreeningSavesLives pic.twitter.com/dhzoZiE4af
— NHS (@NHSuk) March 1, 2022
One activist questioned the measure’s lack of emphasis on mental health services.
“When I transitioned I had an hour with a therapist every week for months,” Debbie Hayton, a transgender activist, told The Times. “That’s what I needed to understand myself. An annual review is a pale shadow of that.”
The gender medication bonuses will initially be offered for three years to doctors in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex and West Sussex, according to the Times.
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