Texas Children’s Hospital, the largest children’s hospital in the United States, has agreed to create a multidisciplinary detransition clinic as part of a settlement resolving a multi-year investigation into billing practices tied to gender-transition procedures for minors.
Under the agreement reached with the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, the hospital will pay $10 million in damages and civil penalties to settle allegations that it submitted false claims to Texas Medicaid and other insurers for procedures deemed unallowable under state policy, including the alleged use of inaccurate diagnosis codes.
As part of the settlement, Texas Children’s Hospital also agreed to stop administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors, revoke the medical privileges of five physicians involved in those treatments, and adopt additional compliance and ethics reforms, reports said.
The hospital will further amend its bylaws to require automatic relinquishment of privileges for any physician found to be violating Texas law prohibiting medical interventions intended to transition minors.
The settlement also requires TCH to establish what officials described as the nation’s first multidisciplinary detransition clinic. The facility is intended to provide medical and restorative care for patients who previously underwent gender-transition procedures.
According to the agreement, all services offered through the clinic will be funded by the hospital and provided free of charge for the first five years of operation.
The United States Department of Justice said the hospital has committed millions of dollars toward care for patients described in the settlement as detransitioners — individuals seeking treatment after undergoing transition-related medical procedures.
“Under the terms of this landmark agreement, Texas Children’s will establish the first-ever multidisciplinary clinic designed to provide medical care to patients who were subjected to ‘gender-transition’ procedures,” said Texas AG Ken Paxton, who is running against GOP incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.
“This Detransition Clinic will help patients reverse the damage caused by ideologically-motivated physicians who harmed patients by performing dangerous medical interventions for the purpose of ‘transitioning’ them,” he added.
“For the first five years, all services provided through the Detransition Clinic will be funded by Texas Children’s and be free of charge to patients,” he said.
The investigation began in 2023 through the Texas Healthcare Program Enforcement Division after Texas enacted legislation prohibiting gender-transition medical treatments for minors.
According to hospital statements, TCH cooperated with investigators and produced more than 5 million documents during the probe.
In a statement responding to the settlement, the hospital said it made “the difficult decision to settle with the Texas Attorney General and the Department of Justice, closing a chapter that has been wrought with falsehoods and distractions.”
The hospital added: “To be clear – we are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation. This settlement will allow us to redirect those precious resources to focus on the life-saving care and groundbreaking discoveries of our exceptional clinicians and scientists.”
The DOJ acknowledged the hospital’s cooperation during the investigation and emphasized that the settlement resolves allegations only, without any formal determination of liability.
Earlier this spring, a federal appeals court upheld a Texas law that requires public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, possibly setting the issue up for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld Senate Bill 10 this week. This bill says that all public schools in the state “shall” put up the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
People who are against the law said they will take the case to the highest court in the country. Rav Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District is the name of the case.
The Center Square talked to David Hacker, vice president of legal services and senior counsel at First Liberty Institute. He said that the decision means schools must follow the law’s requirement. Hacker said that the Ten Commandments can teach us things.
They are “a foundational moral, literary, and historical text. Their influence on Western legal traditions is widely acknowledged and needs to be part of any complete education,” Hacker told the outlet.