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Doctors from the state Board of Medicine and the Board of Osteopathic Medicine voted Thursday to wait until later this year to create permanent rules for transgender health care in Florida.
During an hour-long joint meeting of the boards, held in Orlando Thursday afternoon, doctors voted unanimously on the delay and discussed how to move forward with establishing rules governing gender-affirming care for both transgender adults and minors in the state.
Christopher Dierlam, board counsel, advised the boards to move forward in a “timely, diligent manner” and suggested three options as to how to approach creating permanent rules, saying they could adopt the existing emergency rules as permanent rules; potentially modify emergency rules and then adopt them as permanent rules; or start from scratch with new consent forms.
Scot Ackerman, chair of the Board of Medicine, made a motion to modify the emergency rules.
“I think we have a good emergency rule in place,” he said, adding that they should take input over the next few months before moving forward in October or December.
“I think there will be some issues that may come up that we don’t know about yet, as people try to implement things and implement these rules, and I’m sure we’ll have some good feedback to massage this a bit.”
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The motion included noticing the proposed rules for development in an effort to gather more input from the public.
The emergency rules will remain in effect until they are replaced by formal rules. Ackerman said he would like the new rules to be done by the end of the year.
The emergency rules, passed at a June 30 meeting, included informed consent forms for transgender adults and minors. They gave various guidelines for transgender people, requiring adults to receive a mental health evaluation by a Florida-licensed board certified psychiatrist or psychologist at the start of their treatment and every subsequent two years, and a witness signature for adults receiving top surgery.
The guideline requiring adults to get a mental health evaluation was struck from the informed consent documents at Thursday’s meeting, as it was called into question whether or not the two boards had the authority to create such guidelines.
Public comment lasted about 30 minutes, with speakers asking board members to listen to transgender Floridians and questioning why this continues to be a political issue.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, who has attended multiple Board of Medicine meetings, called much of the language in the existing guidelines “arbitrary and capricious.”
“A lot of the basis of this legislation and … parts of the rule-making process have been based in just misguided information, a lot of political sensationalism, versus what is the best care practice,” she said.
“As medical experts and folks who provide care to your patients, I think it’s important to not ignore that reality that we are making rules upon junk science, and it’s really important for the patients here to be supportive and who they are and not to have to jump through hoops and hurdles to access care.”
The emergency rules were put into place following the passage of SB 254, a law that has already been challenged in court. In early June, a judge blocked enforcement of the ban on gender affirming care for minors. Since then, several transgender adults have join the lawsuit.
Gender affirming care for both transgender minors and adults is backed by almost all major medical associations in America.
Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at 321-290-4744 or fwalker@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @_finchwalker.
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