For the first time, a hospital in Washington state will perform vaginoplasty surgeries, The Spokesman-Review reports. After a unanimous vote from its board of commissioners, Pullman Regional Hospital in far eastern Washington will be the first hospital in the state to offer the procedure. While several local hospitals offer other gender affirmation surgeries, the only other hospital in the region to offer vaginoplasties is Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
The hospital is expected to perform a maximum of two surgeries per month, though it won’t start offering them until a surgeon at Pullman Regional is fully trained. Chief executive Scott Adams told The Spokesman-Review that while gender affirming surgeries might be controversial among some people, the hospital views it as just another form of care. In July, when the hospital was considering offering vaginoplasty, Adams said that because so few hospitals in the Northwest offer this service, there’s a regional gap in knowledge about “demand for the surgery, cost of care, insurance coverage and patients’ post-operative needs.”
Pullman Regional is a 25-bed public hospital governed by an elected board of commissioners. In June, the board asked for public comment on whether to continue offering them (which it had been doing on a trial basis). Out of 400 responses from the public, 260 were positive, 80 negative, and the rest undecided.