JOURNALIST: Can I just get you say your full name and title?
ASSISTANT MINISTER EMMA MCBRIDE: Emma McBride, Member for Dobell, where we are today, and Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention and Rural and Regional Health.
JOURNALIST: Emma, do you want to start by telling us why we're here this morning?
MCBRIDE: Thank you everybody for coming out today to join Dr Reid, the Member for Robertson, Liesl Tesch, the Member for Gosford, Sara Foster, the CEO of the Community Women's Health Centre, and everyone here today to celebrate a really significant moment, a really significant investment, in the access to healthcare for women and girls on the Central Coast.
I'm so proud to be here as a local member for the official opening of the Central Coast’s own endo and pelvic pain clinic, the 33rd around the country and part of a more than $800 million investment by the Commonwealth in the health for women and girls. As someone who grew up on the Central Coast and as a local pharmacist, I know how hard it was for so many women and girls to access the support and care that they needed close to home affordably and when they need it. And this investment will build on more than 50 years of quality care provided to women and girls in our community.
We know about one in seven women experience endometriosis and more are impacted by the whole-life impacts of pelvic pain. And importantly, these clinics will now also provide more support for women like myself experiencing perimenopause and menopause, and we know just how vital that is to local people in our community. And it's so important for people on the Central Coast to be able to now access this affordably and close to home.
I'll now hand over to my colleague and friend, Dr Gordon Reid, to speak a little bit more about the service. Thanks, Gordon.
GORDON REID, MEMBER FOR ROBERTSON: Thanks, Emma, and thank you all for being here today. Look, today's a great day for the Central Coast for the opening of this pelvic pain and endometriosis clinic. It's going to provide wraparound multidisciplinary services for women and girls here on the Central Coast. And I know, in my time as an emergency department doctor, both now and previously, we'd have multiple people presenting at all hours of the day and night for issues relating to both endometriosis and pelvic pain as well. And the emergency department, more often than not, is not an appropriate setting for people to be presenting to. There isn't those wraparound services that are required for women who are experiencing these conditions. That includes things like physiotherapy. That includes things like dietetics, other social work components, but also to that general practice primary care component, that wraparound holistic care, that should be the main stay of care and treatment for women here on the Central Coast. And now, with the opening of this clinic that is going to be the case.
And I just want to thank the staff here at the Women's Health Centre for taking me through and having a bit of a tour of this this amazing facility, from point of contact and triage at the desk on the phone through the different clinic rooms and the different services that are available and on offer, and then also to how the journey of that patient will progress from start to finish and then beyond. This is going to be an absolutely fantastic service for women here on the Central Coast. I want to thank Assistant Minister Emma McBride for being here today and also too being a huge advocate for women's health here on the Central Coast and thank my parliamentary colleague, Liesl Tesch, for all that she does here on the Central Coast for women's health.
I just want to say as well part of this project and part of this commitment that the Government has made has been because of not only the sacrifice but also too, women speaking up. We've held multiple Women's Health Forums right across the Central Coast. In the last term of government, we held one with Assistant Minister Ged Kearney, where we heard stories from women talking about their experiences with endometriosis and with pelvic pain – that diagnostic latency, not being able to access care, not being able to access diagnostics, not being able to access allied health services. And that has caused not just physical pain and emotional distress, but that has ongoing lifelong challenges for women. And that's why this service is so important. So, I want to thank those women who came to those Women's Health Forums who, in a very public forum, expressed their concerns, expressed their issues relating to their care because the advocacy that women have done here on the Central Coast has led to clinics like this being set up here in Wyoming but right across the country. Thank you.
LIESL TESCH, MEMBER FOR GOSFORD: Thank you very much to everyone who's been here today. I too say an incredible thank you and congratulations in the celebration of this Women's Health Centre’s on the Central Coast, 50 years of delivery to our community. But in reality, this also reflects, and I'm really proud to say, both state and federal government that have 50 per cent women on their frontbench. When women are sitting in government making decisions about women's lives, this is the result and the investment changes significantly. So that's my gratitude for a community who- and a government who have made the choice to put 50 per cent women on the frontbench. So women's issues like absolute- endometriosis, pelvic pain, menopause, perimenopause - like you, Emma - but having these things as government policy and everyday conversation in government is something that we haven't seen before to this extent. So I'm proud to be part of this government. Thank you.
MCBRIDE: Sara.
SARA FOSTER, CENTRAL COAST COMMUNITY WOMEN'S HEALTH CENTRE CEO: Thank you. Thank you so much for being here today. We are the largest and longest-serving women's focused charity here on the Central Coast, and it’s actually always been our mission to remove barriers to women accessing the healthcare that they need. And this, through the generous and just fantastic funding that we've received through the Federal Government, means that we are now able to expand services to provide more care, wraparound support for women who are navigating pelvic pain and endometriosis as well as perimenopause and menopause. We are absolutely thrilled. I wanted to extend a big thank you to the PHN who have been partnering with us on this work. It's through the Primary Healthcare Network that we're really able to mobilise this funding that comes through from the Federal Government and get it to the grassroots, get it to the women who are needing to access these vital and critical services and support. And I also want to extend a thank you to the incredible team here at the Central Coast Community Women's Health Centre who have worked tirelessly over the last 50 years to provide incredibly important and needed services so that women have safe and healthy futures here on the Central Coast. Thank you everyone.
JOURNALIST: Sara, do you mind if I just ask you a question? Can I just ask, what were you seeing before you had this specialised clinic? Did you have patients coming in, you know, may suspect that they had an endometriosis and you didn't have the specialised care. Could you talk us through what it looked like before this clinic opened?
FOSTER: Yeah, with pelvic pain and endometriosis, what we have heard from women historically is that because these symptoms show up in a variety of different ways, women can spend years and years searching for diagnosis, and at the end of a five to six year journey of just seeking answers can be feeling really lost and almost at a point of giving in. And so through this funding, through the funding through the federal government what we're able to do because we're a women-led service, we meet women where they're at, and we have a holistic view on what's happening for them and I think that leads to better outcomes for them.
JOURNALIST: So will you have staff dedicated to this clinic? Is it staff that are already here or are you bringing in new staff?
FOSTER: Yes, so we have brought in a new team to support this program. So our existing GPs, our specialised women's health GPs, clinical nurses as well as wraparound support from Allied Health will form a care team, but it does actually extend beyond the physical body and there is emotional and mental support that is also needed so the service will extend through to our counselling team as well again to wrap around the support that women need, how they need it.
JOURNALIST: And how often is this clinic open for women?
FOSTER: So this clinic is open throughout the week. It is a phased rollout because we do want to make sure that we are providing a quality service, but women will be able to access information via our website and we'll be partnering with GPs across the Central Coast and other specialists to make sure that women have an inroad into this program.
JOURNALIST: Gordon, do you mind if I just ask you about- correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was before this clinic, to access sort of specialised care that was subsidised, like through Medicare, people were just going to Gosford Hospital for general gynaecology services. Was that the case? Was there any sort of specialised care on the Central Coast?
REID: Yeah, so there was a mixed setting here on the Central Coast. People could access private services. Obviously if they could pay for it they could access private services. That in itself creates a barrier. But then more often than not, because there wasn't that primary care wraparound component, so primary care GP, physio, dietetics, other allied health, we found that people were presenting to the emergency departments at Gosford and Wyong Hospital particularly for flares of endometriosis, but then also for chronic pelvic pain, and then they would be discharged back into the care of their GP that they then couldn't follow up with either because of expense or waiting times, and then there wasn't that wraparound service for them to be discharged into.
So you can imagine, and I think we're all aware of it, but if you're discharged into that setting then not only are there medical implications to that but there's chronic pain implications, social implications, not being able to work, care for family, be a functioning productive member of society. So yes, people were presenting to our critical care services for pelvic pain and flares of endometriosis.
And can I just say, there will be some instances where that is still appropriate. If you have an acute chronic flare that isn't being treated by analgesia that your GP has prescribed, then you need further doses of that, then the emergency department might be the place that you need to be at. But more often than not, chronic pelvic pain endometriosis requires services like this clinic will provide. That's that primary care wraparound service with allied and ancillary health.
JOURNALIST: And will patients be able to, women, will they be able to come here and have their appointments subsidised through Medicare? Will that be the process?
REID: Yeah, so what this clinic is providing is affordable services for women, subsidised services for women in the pelvic pain and endometriosis space. So it'll be a referral pathway, I believe. Obviously this is all still being worked out by the clinic for their own individual policies and procedures, but there will be a referral pathway from primary care from other health professionals including allied health who can notify the patient of the service here that there are GPs available, physiotherapists, allied health and the like, for them to come and get the services they need here. It's not- the way I think of it in my mind, it's a one-stop shop for women who are suffering from the effects of endometriosis and pelvic pain.
JOURNALIST: So you'll get a referral to come here, rather than coming straight…
REID: Yeah, so there’s a referral pathway via GPs or other health professionals as well.