REBECCA WHITE, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING: The Australian Labor Government’s been really serious about supporting women access the healthcare that they need, and I’m really thrilled that from 1 July, across the 33 endo and pelvic pain clinics, women will also be able to get access to care and support for menopause and perimenopause. We know a lot of women are living with symptoms of menopause or perimenopause and are confused, feel like they’ve been pushed aside by the medical system, in some cases dismissed, and not able to get the answers that that they've been seeking. We've been doing a lot of work to provide better resources through our health workforce, but also providing direct services through places like here in Tasmania, Family Planning, so that women can access the care and support they need in an environment that's welcoming and supportive.
Right across the country from 1 July last year through Medicare, we initiated a new menopause item, and 125,000 women have now been able to use that going to see their GP. We also listed on the PBS new hormone therapies last year, and 450,000 Australian women have been able to access cheaper medicines including hormone therapy because of our changes. This has been life changing for some women who told us that the symptoms of menopause, have been confusing, that they feel dismissed and like their life is turning upside down. Being able to get answers from trusted health professionals who can guide them through their treatment is so important. A lot of women tell me that going through menopause feels like you're entering a secret society where you don't know anything about it until you're in the middle of it. We need to break down the barriers for access to good information and treatment pathways that are available more readily, and we also need to break down the stigma that exists across our country when it comes to talking about menopause. It is something that's going to affect half our population. It's completely normal. And we need to make it much easier for people to get access to the information and the care that they deserve.
I'm really thrilled to be joined here today at Family Planning by Dr Catherine Moult, who's going to speak about what it's like delivering services here. And also we have Lia, who's a patient, who can talk about her experience living with menopause.
DR CATHERINE MOULT, FAMILY PLANNING TASMANIA: Thank you, Bec. So here at Family Planning Tasmania, we see a lot of women. We see a wide range of women ranging from teenagers right through to older patients, and including those that are transitioning through perimenopause and menopause. And this is a huge issue that impacts women and it can really have a massive impact on their life, their ability to work, to function, to parent. So yeah, we really welcome this additional funding because it's just going to be able to build on the important work that we already do to support these women.
JOURNALIST: What will it enable you to actually deliver?
MOULT: Just to be able to build on the services that we already provide to women who are suffering perimenopause and menopause, yeah.
JOURNALIST: And what are those services?
MOULT: We currently see patients for consults here at Family Planning Tasmania across our three clinics. So in the north west in Burnie and Launceston and in Hobart. So yeah, we've got a team of women health GPs that support patients through.
JOURNALIST: And what's the pathway towards accessing that service usually?
MOULT: So patients can just self-refer into the clinics, or we always welcome a GP referring a patient to us in a letter. That just gives us that additional background information.
JOURNALIST: What are some signs that you might be needing to self-refer yourself to these services?
MOULT: Good question. I think a lot of women have sought help along the way and often they are dismissed or told no, it's not perimenopause, it's not your hormones. So I think if you're experiencing that and feel like you're not being heard then yeah, come in and see us here.
JOURNALIST: What are some of those symptoms?
MOULT: So the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause are really wide-ranging. It impacts your whole body. So you can have symptoms like brain fog, the vasomotor symptoms, so hot flashes and night sweats. You can have issues with dry skin, with joint pains, joint aches. it's a really wide range of symptoms.
JOURNALIST: And is it just people of a certain age and demographic who might experience these symptoms, or can it be a young person that experiences it too?
MOULT: Yeah, so I think the average age of menopause is about 51, 52 in Australia, but perimenopause can start many years before that. And we see patients who are in their 40s that start experiencing symptoms of perimenopause, but it can also affect women much younger. So women can be in their 30s, their 20s even. Or if you have a surgical procedure, you can go into surgical menopause. So yeah, it affects women of all ages.
JOURNALIST: So, I guess, would your message be if someone's a little bit in doubt, just to get a check-up then, even if they are that bit younger?
MOULT: Absolutely.
JOURNALIST: Prior to the expansion of this program, what were some of the gaps women were facing when it came to accessing menopause care?
MOULT: Yeah, I think at the moment it is hard for people to access a GP and to get an appointment. So that's something that we're really trying to work on here is to get our waiting times down so we can see people, see women in a timely manner, and we're really focused about wait times. Again, like I said, women often go and seek help and then are dismissed, told that it can't be perimenopause.
JOURNALIST: What is the current wait time at the moment?
MOULT: For our clinic here?
JOURNALIST: Yeah.
MOULT: It's about 30 days in Hobart to get an appointment. And we like to give women a longer appointment because, you know, you can't do this in 15 minutes.
JOURNALIST: So is that a 30-day wait time specifically to access the menopausal care, or just appointments in general?
MOULT: Appointments in general at the moment. In some of our other clinics, the waiting times are different, but we are constantly trying to reduce waiting times.
JOURNALIST: And it's free when people do get in?
MOULT: We bulk bill core patients, so if you're under 21, you're a concession card holder or you're a full-time student, but otherwise our gap is very small. And, you know, if patients are in financial difficulty, we will take that into consideration and bulk bill them.
JOURNALIST: Thank you very much.
MOULT: You're welcome.
JOURNALIST: Great. And what prompted you to become a patient, and how did you get an appointment?
LIA DI VIRGILIO, PATIENT: I was experiencing severe hot flushes during the night, and I was just putting up with them because my mum experienced them from a young age. Mum was 44, I was 44, my sister was 44, we were all bang on time. And I just- yeah, mum just said, oh, you know, it's just life. I watched my mum go through it for years and I thought, oh, this is just what you do when you hit this, you just have to put up with this. But then I started getting them at work as well. I work face-to-face and, you know, having interviews with customers and I'd just break out in sweat and sometimes feel like I was going to faint. Yeah, I'd talk to my mum about it and mum said, look, when I was younger, I went on tablets, but you shouldn't do it because my doctor told me that it's going to affect me for life so I've come off them, so just don't do it. So I just thought I shouldn't do that. So I really didn't have any other advice. But I was very interested in a podcast, a lady that I follow, Yvie Jones, and she's very, very informative about menopause, and suddenly I thought, hang on, no, I don't have to put up with this. And so I sought out- I spoke to my GP first. My GP was really good. She said, look, I can- gave me your information. She said, if you really want an in-depth conversation, go to Family Planning. So, yeah, I was really lucky. I came here basically on second contact and had a wonderful doctor who explained everything. He saw my worries, all the concerns that my mum had. And within I think it was less than two weeks, it just all disappeared. The brain fog as well was something that I was struggling with. I do still struggle with that a little bit. But yeah, the night sweats completely went and I just- it was life-changing for me.
JOURNALIST: And that's due to medications that you have been prescribed?
DI VIRGILIO: Yes.
JOURNALIST: Incredible. Is it a lot of medication?
DI VIRGILIO: I was prescribed the gel. So I just put gel on my arms in the morning and take the progesterone tablet in the evening. And if I do forget over a few days, I will have one night sweat during the night. But I was having them every hour, so I got hardly any sleep for the first probably 12 months.
JOURNALIST: You said, yeah, it's life-changing. I guess, did it just make day-to-day life a lot easier for you, even just to go to work?
DI VIRGILIO: Absolutely. Like, work became a lot easier and just getting enough sleep as well, because I was awake on the hour. And I would wake up before a sweat would even come on, and it would just be like, okay, I'm awake, oh that's right, I'm about to get a hot sweat. And it would just happen like that. It was- yeah. But I do feel like I experienced that- for me, that was really difficult, but I have talked to so many people that have had it so much worse and have struggled through it. And basically, it felt like they didn't even want to be here anymore because of their symptoms, of their hormones. And again, as soon as they went on medication, everything went back to normal. They can go back to work. They could feel like everything was normal again.
JOURNALIST: And feel like themselves again.
DI VIRGILIO: Yeah.
JOURNALIST: How do you think your day-to-day life would be like right now if you didn't have access to this care?
DI VIRGILIO: I think I would have gone quite downhill if I had have let it continue. As I said, I definitely wasn't getting enough sleep. I was struggling at work. I was getting snappier with my children, snappier with my wife. Yeah, everything would have probably- yeah, I actually don't know what would happen, but it wouldn't be good.
JOURNALIST: Great. Thanks very much. Do you mind saying your age?
DI VIRGILIO: I am 48 today.
JOURNALIST: Happy birthday! And I just remembered, Bec White mentioned it feels a bit like a secretive society. How many conversations apart from what you heard from your mum had you had before you realised you were actually going through menopause?
DI VIRGILIO: Not a lot at all. I literally just watched mum fan herself every night for- my mum is now in her late 60s, and she's still doing it because she just is still scared. And I know I've had so many conversations. My sister also has been struggling with it for a few more years than me, and her doctor was very reluctant and in the end, has now prescribed for her. And again, within a couple of weeks, everything has changed for her too. So I am a fierce advocate. I am telling anyone that will listen to me, basically.
JOURNALIST: Thank you.
WHITE: Thanks, Lia. Do you have any further questions for us?
JOURNALIST: Yeah, I might just ask you to clarify the amount of money that’s going into this and how many clinics in Tasmania and nationally?
WHITE: Yeah. So we have 33 endo and pelvic pain clinics across the country, including one in Tasmania that's delivered by Family Planning, but they deliver that across three sites. So we're covering the north, the northwest and the south. And the total commitment from the government for our endo and pelvic pain clinics that now include menopause and perimenopause is around $40 million.
JOURNALIST: How many of those 33 clinics prior to this expansion were already offering some form of menopause care?
WHITE: So the way that we work to identify the endo and pelvic pain clinics was look to work with practices that were already specialising in women's healthcare. So some of them already had expertise, but what we've been able to do from 1 July this year is to supercharge that, and also really draw attention to them because we want them to be a beacon for women to know where they can go to get information in healthcare. Because what we do know is that a lot of women don't know where to turn to. They might be seeing a GP who's a bit dismissive, or maybe doesn't properly understand menopause and perimenopause. So what I want Australian women to understand is that our endo and pelvic clinics are also now providing support and care for menopause and perimenopause, and that if you're concerned or you're curious or you don't know where else to get answers, that these are the best places to start looking.
JOURNALIST: Is there anything the Federal Government can do to support clinics to provide more appointments, given that the wait time is currently about a month?
WHITE: We've been investing very heavily in primary healthcare and investing in strengthening Medicare, including an $8.5 billion uplift that has allowed more practices to provide bulk billing appointments, which has meant that we've seen a lot more demand from patients wanting to see a GP because cost is no longer a barrier for many patients. So that has put a bit of extra pressure on some of our practices who are getting more people wanting to see a doctor, which is a good thing. We want people to go and have a chat to their healthcare professional rather than worry about whether they can afford to do that or not. We are training more doctors in Australia this year than we did last year, and that's on top of a record year of the year before. So we are doing everything we possibly can to grow the workforce as well as support the intake of workers from overseas coming to Australia, particularly from Ireland, the UK, and other likeminded countries where the training is very similar, so that they've got a faster pathway to come and work here in Australia.
JOURNALIST: And Lia mentioned how the menopausal symptoms were impacting her ability to work. Is investing in things like this a small way to boost productivity?
WHITE: We have a lot of evidence that tells us that women are dropping out of the workforce when they're dealing with menopause. So this is an investment in the productivity of our economy as well as in the lives of the women who are living with menopause and perimenopause. We want women to be able to continue to do the daily tasks that they've always been able to do without worrying about the impact of menopause on their lives, disrupting them, causing the brain fog, and just making them feel less like themselves. We know that when women are able to access the healthcare that they deserve, particularly when it comes to menopause, they're able to continue being a great parent, a great partner, and a great employee or running their own business, and that's what we want for every woman.
JOURNALIST: Is there funding attached to the expansion of services?
WHITE: Yes, there is.
JOURNALIST: Could you share how much?
WHITE: So across the whole 33 endo and pelvic pain clinics who are now delivering menopause and perimenopause, there is a $40 million allocation in the budget as I mentioned. That does include a contribution for each of those clinics to also provide perimenopause and menopause services. Now, each clinic is using that in different ways. It might be through increasing their ability to hire staff or maybe provide other services, devices, and equipment, or it might be increasing their actual footprint so that they can see more patients.
JOURNALIST: Great. Thanks very much.