New Ottawa gender-affirming care clinic open; patients now welcome

The Ottawa Hospital’s new gender-affirming clinic is the first in province to offer a full range of sex reassignment surgeries to trans and non-binary patients.

First launched in September, 2023 by co-founder Dr. Nicholas Cormier, it is the only clinic in Ontario to offer facial, top and bottom gender-affirming surgeries in the same place.

“There’s just a massive gap in our health-care system for the treatment of the transgender population and people seeking gender-affirming care,” Cormier said.

“What’s so groundbreaking about this new clinic is that everyone is coming together to address this shortcoming in our system.”

Prior to opening its doors, only top surgery was available locally and patients needed to travel to GrS Montreal for others.

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In addition to being partnered with with different surgical divisions at the Ottawa hospital, including plastic surgery, urology, obstetrics and gynecology, the clinic also works with trans health programs in the community.

Places like Centretown Community Health Centre’s Trans Health Program, which refers patients to the clinic, and CHEO’s Gender Diversity Clinic, are important to the process as accessing gender-affirming surgery is just one small component of gender-affirming care, Cormier added.

“In my residency, I was always interested in gender-affirming care,” Cormier said. “That led me to seek out a fellowship in San Francisco, where I was able to train with world-renowned experts in gender-affirming care and I’m really excited about bringing that to my hometown of Ottawa.”

The Ottawa Hospital previously launched the Gender and Diversity Specialty Clinic in January 2022 and it is one of Canada’s only hospital-based clinics dedicated to caring for medically complex trans and non-binary patients.