FOI – 2023-000201 - Transgender-related treatment costs per individual (HTML)

Date received – 09 June 2023 | Date responded – 05 July 2023

Request

The overall amount spent on transgender-related treatments each year from 2017/18 to 2022/23, such as gender-affirming care, medication, counselling/therapies, surgery et al.

Would it also be possible to break the figures down into how much was spent each year per individual who received this treatment and/or the total number of people who received gender reassignment surgeries in each of those years.

Response

I refer to your freedom of information request that we received on 09 June 2023. I can advise you that we have now completed the search of our records and can provide you with the following information:

The overall amount spent on transgender-related treatments each year from 2017/18 to 2022/23, such as gender-affirming care, medication, counselling/therapies, surgery et al.

The same information was requested in a previous Freedom of Information request (FOI-2023–000179). As per Section 14(2) “Repeated Requests” of the FOISA act, when a Scottish public authority has complied with a request from a person for information, it is not obliged to comply with a subsequent request from that person which is identical or substantially similar unless there has been a reasonable period between the making of the request complied with and the making of the subsequent request.

Would it also be possible to break the figures down into how much was spent each year per individual who received this treatment and/or the total number of people who received gender reassignment surgeries in each of those years.

Under Section 38(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002 (FOISA), NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) is withholding information regarding the cost to individual patients in line with the Caldicott Principles. What we can provide you with is the standard cost per patient for each treatment. See below details:

• Chest Reconstruction - £5,804
• Male to Female Surgery - £10,737
• Female to Male Surgery - £20,750

Under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act, 2002 (FOISA) an organisation does not have to provide any information if it does not hold that information. NSS does not hold information regarding the total number of people who have received gender reassignment surgery. What we can provide you with is the total number of patients referred for surgery. Please find attached Appendix 1 – Total number of patients referred for surgery, which details this information.

I trust you will find the information of assistance and if you require any further information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

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Contact

Address

If after a review you are still unhappy, you also have the right to apply to the Scottish Information Commissioner, who can be contacted at Kinburn Castle, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9DS, or via their application form.

National Services Scotland (NSS) is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. You can view all FOI responses within our FOI Publications repository.