Vanderbilt University Medical Center has announced it will stop performing gender-affirming plastic surgeries for adults due to operational limitations. The Nashville-based hospital continues to offer nonsurgical gender-affirming care for those 19 and older but provides no such care for patients under 19. This decision follows earlier criticism of the program's former director for comments on the profitability of these procedures.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center, known as Vanderbilt Health and separate from Vanderbilt University, confirmed to The Daily Wire that it is phasing out gender-affirming plastic surgeries for adults. A hospital spokesman stated, “Due to operational limitations and lack of surgical coverage, Vanderbilt Health will cease providing gender-affirming plastic surgeries for adults.” The procedures include those such as crafting pseudo-genitalia and removing breasts.
The hospital's transgender medical program, which opened in 2018, aimed “to coordinate” patients’ “care wherever they are in the transition process,” according to former director Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor. In September 2022, Daily Wire host Matt Walsh published videos highlighting Taylor's comments on the financial aspects of these surgeries. Taylor said, “It’s a lot of money,” and “These surgeries make a lot of money.” She noted that “chest reconstruction” could bring in $40,000 per patient and described “female-to-male bottom surgeries”—involving skin from the forearm, abdomen, and thigh—as “huge money makers.” Taylor added, “These surgeries are labor intensive, there are a lot of follow-ups, they require a lot of our time, and they make money... They make money for the hospital.”
Taylor has since left Vanderbilt and now operates a primary care center in Massachusetts, describing herself as an expert in “general LGBTQ Health and Adolescent Medicine.” The 2022 investigation prompted a statewide probe by Republican officials in Tennessee, leading to a ban on transgender procedures for minors. This ban, challenged by the ACLU, was upheld by the Supreme Court in June 2025. Over two dozen states have enacted similar laws to restrict such procedures for minors, and the Trump administration has withdrawn federal funding from hospitals offering them to children while initiating investigations. In Tennessee, a bill is progressing through the legislature to bar TennCare, the state's program for low-income individuals, from funding transgender procedures.
