Mature Women’s Centre closure ‘an assault on women’s health’: staff member

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This article was published 17/07/2017 (3012 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Patients and health care providers say they will challenge the provincial government’s plan to close the Mature Women’s Centre at Victoria General Hospital.

“It’s an assault on women’s health,” said one of the health care providers at the centre that offers services mainly to menopausal women. Staff and some of the centre’s patients are co-ordinating a response to the planned closure, said the source, who wasn’t prepared Monday to be identified.

Last week, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority announced that it is closing the centre, which had more than 5,000 patient visits last year, to save $160,000 per year.

The Mature Women’s Centre, which specializes in dealing with a range of gynecological issues, including menopause transition and hysterectomy alternatives, began in 1994 at Health Sciences Centre then moved to Victoria General Hospital in 2006. It offers patients a team approach to care that includes doctors and nurses, a pharmacist, dietitian and a kinesiologist.

The WRHA plans to close the centre in mid-October, and its services will either be transitioned back to primary care providers with a treatment plan or referred to community gynecologists, said WRHA spokeswoman Bronwyn Penner Holigroski. “Those patients requiring more complex care may be referred to HSC for ongoing clinical consultation and treatment.”

The WRHA plans to use the space the centre now occupies at Victoria Hospital for acute adult inpatient mental health services “in accordance with the WRHA’s commitment to enhance mental health services across the region,” she said.

The government hasn’t looked at how much money the Mature Women’s Centre has saved with the services it offers, says a former patient opposed to its closure.

“This clinic closure and loss of service to women seems to be very shortsighted and not in keeping with a focus on prevention,” said the woman who used the centre’s services for more than 20 years and asked not to publicly identified. The centre provides help that is not offered to women at a critical time in their life cycle by their family physicians, she said.

“I see it as a preventive health service helping women avoid more expensive services such as emergency rooms and operating rooms. The nurses at the clinic also help to offset more expensive family doctor appointments, she said. “Mental health issues are frequent symptoms during menopause and many family doctors do not treat these health issues appropriately.”

An article about the centre in the 2017 spring edition of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority publication Wave said the “nurse-managed model of care at the centre emphasizes health promotion, and disease and disability prevention, from a physical, cultural, emotional and spiritual perspective.”

While patients tend to be 50 years of age or older, the centre also has patients between the ages of 20 and 40 who are experiencing premature menopause due to surgery, radiation, chemotherapy or other treatment-induced causes, along with a condition called primary ovarian insufficiency, the Wave article said. Younger women experience the same symptoms, like night sweats and hot flashes, but they are at higher risk for cardiac and bone health problems, it said:

“Most patients attend the centre hoping for relief of their symptoms, and are seen by the nursing team, with the pharmacist brought in to discuss medications. They soon learn they can make lifestyle changes as well, such as changing their diet, increasing exercise and decreasing stress.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca