NHS gender clinics do not meet quality assurance standards.

An operational and delivery review¹ of adult gender clinics in England found that clinics lacked patient outcome data, had limited data reporting of inconsistent quality, and had minimal clinical audit. These failings put the clinics outside standard NHS quality assurance expectations. 

These clinics also showed no signs of responding to the changing demographics of their referrals. Clinics made little effort to respond to the needs of this changing cohort, which was younger and more female than had previously been the case.

Some clinics reportedly carried out little or no knowledge-sharing or quality improvement work. Senior clinical leadership also steered some clinicians away from appropriate clinical curiosity, limiting opportunities to improve patient outcomes. In addition, many clinics were not well overseen by their local trust boards, nor by NHS England.

1. Levy D, Operational and delivery review of NHS adult gender dysphoria clinics in England. https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/operational-and-delivery-review-of-nhs-adult-gender-dysphoria-clinics-in-england/ ↩︎