My Last Day at VCU Health
After nine years, today was my last day as a VCU Health employee. My former coworkers are some of the best, kindest, and brightest people I’ve ever worked with and I’m proud of the work we did together.
I’m less proud of VCU Health leadership’s refusal to follow the law and defend my family. I’m the parent of a trans person, and VCU Health leadership’s decisions cut off my kid’s healthcare and broke my family’s trust.
On Tuesday, January 28th, the president issued an executive order titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation”. Among other things, this document:
- Defined some trans-affirming care as “mutilation.”
- Threatened to withhold federal funding from any hospital system that provides trans-affirming care.
- Defined a trans child as anyone who is under 19 years old.
The day this executive order was released just happened to be my kid’s 18th birthday.
I knew things would be bad, but trusted that VCU Health would do all it could to stand up for families like mine. All my experiences with the organization until then had shown that the hospital system truly cared about doing the right thing by its employees and patients.
But the following Thursday morning, I started to get reports from friends about VCU Health canceling appointments for trans kids. At first, I didn’t believe it. VCU Health doesn’t do anything that fast. The medical community as a whole doesn’t do anything that fast, and the governmental bodies that regulate health care do things even slower.
I’d read through the language of the executive order, and it contained directions like “within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) shall publish…” or “[w]ithin 60 days of the date of this order, the heads of agencies with responsibilities under this order shall submit…”. None of that “guidance” or “publication” had actually happened yet. As far as Federal and Virginia law was concerned, nothing had actually changed, and no new guidance had been actually released by any governmental authority.
But, Virginia’s Attorney General sent a memo to VCU Health. It basically said that, in his opinion, the executive order was law and that any hospital that continued to ”mutilate children” was going to lose all of its federal funding and get sued.
VCU Health leadership had an opportunity. They had an opportunity to say “the healthcare we provide trans children isn’t mutilation”. They had an opportunity to say ”we stand by our doctors and patients”. They had an opportunity to say simply “we’ll continue to follow the law”. VCU Health said none of this. Rather than stand up for their employees, their employees’ families, and their patients, VCU Health leadership shrugged their shoulders and acted like they were powerless to stop anything.
Internally, employees were incensed. Internal message boards expressed shock and outrage that VCU Health would abandon its patients so easily. In what felt like PR “damage control,” leadership set up ”town hall” zoom meetings where spokespeople equated denying trans people healthcare to a natural disaster with sentiments like “we’ll get through this together just like we got through the water crisis”.
I started looking for a new job. I couldn’t continue to work for an employer who, even tacitly, agreed that the excellent care its own doctors were providing my family was mutilation.
After nearly a month and multiple federal judges declaring the executive order unlawful, on February 25, 2025, VCU Health did resume gender-affirming care, but only for some patients and only for some services. There have been no updates since then, and it feels like the organization has resigned itself to the fact that this is the “new normal”. It could be that folks are working hard behind the scenes to affect change, but I’m not personally aware of them.
Every day VCU Health’s leadership doesn’t change their mind and resume all gender-affirming care for all patients who need it, they are making the world a worse place for somebody’s kid. It is their choice and I hope they make it.
To the co-workers I leave behind, I’m grateful for the time I got to spend with you. Thank you for the work we got to do together and the good work I know you’ll do in the future.
