"New Guidelines Aim to Enlist Primary Care Physicians in Transgender Care" - Joshua Safer, MD

In a move that reflects a growing acceptance of transgender individuals in the U.S., the American College of Physicians on Monday issued its first guidelines on caring for transgender patients. This isn’t the first set of such guidelines. They go back at least 10 years, initially aimed at endocrinologists, the medical specialty to which transgender individuals were often referred. What is newsworthy about the new guidelines is the audience, “your critical mass of general internal medicine people who are primary care providers and also people who are family medicine doctors,” said Dr. Joshua Safer, professor of endocrinology and executive director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York City. According to the new guidelines, transgender medical care has been historically siloed to endocrinologists. “The biggest barrier to care reported by transgender people is lack of knowledgeable providers,” said Safer. Internal medicine and family physicians can provide this care, and it is in the scope of their practices, he added.

 — Joshua Safer, MD, Executive Director, Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai, Senior Faculty, Medicine, Endocrinology, Diabetes and Bone Disease, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

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