Views sought on new transgender healthcare service for Peterborough and Cambridgeshire residents

The Nottingham Centre for Transgender Healthcare (NCTH) and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) are at the early stages of a scoping exercise for the potential new service.

A new survey has been launched, and information from it will be used for consideration to improve access to transgender healthcare by reducing the waiting time to treatment experienced by patients, as well as offering transgender healthcare with less travel requirements.

The survey states: “Rather than the ‘traditional’ model of transgender healthcare services in England, we are thinking about a clinical nurse specialist and general practitioner lead service, located in the Cambridgeshire area.

“A service for adults from the age of 17 years old who are already on waiting lists of transgender healthcare services in England and live within the boundaries of the East of England.

“The current idea would be to establish a new network model of transgender healthcare where a proposed service could be locally based but, if a higher level of need was required, could utilise its network with NCTH to provide more specialist care.

“The initial thoughts are that such a service could offer more timely care and be able to provide care to those who have different support needs.

“We feel that expanding a multiple disciplinary team in transgender healthcare and its clinical leadership is key to modernising and improving the delivery of transgender healthcare rather than continuing with the existing model of care.

“At this stage of the scoping exercise and service design we need your feedback to enable us to develop the proposal for consideration.”

The survey can be accessed by visiting: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc_12SR6Rbwo12f2-xgtkVsaVdUzjWSnduLDcG1FBhRIlekuA/viewform.