"Transgender Programs Flourish Following New York Medicaid Coverage" - Dan Goldberg

In 2015, New York became the ninth state to allow its Medicaid program to cover gender affirmation surgery. Private insurers were beginning to cover it as well. Suddenly, there was a payment model that could support New York hospitals’ investments in transgender surgery programs. The result has been a host of new, more affordable options for transgender people seeking surgery. Mount Sinai Health System became the first academic medical center to open a program in March 2016. “I’m afraid to take vacation,” said Jess Ting, MD, surgical director of Mount Sinai’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery and assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is on pace to perform about 250 this year, and the waiting list at Mount Sinai is so long that another surgeon, currently a Mount Sinai fellow, will be brought on board next summer. “I’m afraid to take a sick day, because that means someone can’t have their surgery,” he said. “The need is incredible,” Dr. Ting said as he sat in his scrubs – and choked up – shortly after completing male-to-female surgery on a 78-year-old patient at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, a patient who had been living as a woman for many decades, and known she had the wrong genitalia since she was 5-years-old.

- Jess Ting, MD, Surgical Director, Mount Sinai’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, Assistant Professor, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

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