Labor investment in women’s health includes subsidies for menopause care
New federal government subsidies for care towards women’s health will be rolled from July 1, but not all services in the Far North suffering financially are guaranteed a boost.
Cairns
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New federal government subsidies for care towards women’s health will be rolled out from July 1, but not all services in Far North Queensland suffering financially are guaranteed a boost.
Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and Labor Senator Nita Green spoke of the government’s pledge to include care for perimenopause and menopause on the list of services to attract Medicare subsidies as part of a $500m investment in women’s health.
Speaking from the True Relationships and Reproductive Health clinic at Cairns, Ms Plibersek said the clinic had been offering women perimenopause and menopause without funding.
“The expansion of menopause care means that the service here will get an additional subsidy, an additional fee for doing a session with a woman who’s experiencing perimenopause or menopause and talking to her about her treatment,” she said.
“At the moment, a lot of that work this clinic has been doing is unfunded, and so this gives them the opportunity to expand that service to many more women who will need it.
“It also means that your ordinary GP will have the time and the resources to do these types of consultations. For the first time ever, clinical guidelines will be delivered for menopause.”
The Labor “record investment” in women’s health services comes as the Far North’s diagnostic imaging services suffer from a reported financial sustainability and lack of staffing resources, impacting women requiring mammograms.
Doctors and clinicians in the industry have been calling for an increase to the Medicare rate to attract and retain radiologists in the field.
Ms Green pointed to CQUniversity’s new CBD campus set to train students from 2028 in various disciplines of health when asked about workforce issues in radiology.
“We know that breast screening is also one of those things that women are conscious of and they want access to, and so our government has been working with the state government on how to restore those services to places like Cairns, where we have seen some of those services go away,” she said.
The federal government’s boost to women’s health also included the first PBS listing for new oral contraceptive pills in more than 30 years, with the listing of Yaz and Yasmin and the first PBS listing for new menopausal hormone therapies in more than 20 years, with around 150,000 women expected to benefit from the listing of Prometrium, Estrogel and Estrogel Pro.
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Originally published as Labor investment in women’s health includes subsidies for menopause care
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