Bendigo Community Health Services is in full support of a proposed comprehensive sexual and reproductive health service demand and gap analysis for the whole of Victoria following the release of the Victorian Auditor-General’s report to State Parliament into Supporting Sexual and Reproductive Health.

Four years after dedicated sexual and reproductive health hubs were first funded in Victoria, the report has called for more knowledge on the influence those hubs were having on access to services.

BCHS is one of 11 State Government-funded sexual and reproductive health hubs. Its records show since becoming a hub in 2019, its sexual and reproductive health services have more than doubled. Services included IUD insertions, medical abortions, abortion-related counselling and STI treatments.

During the 2019-2020 reporting cycle 2,185 services were delivered at the Bendigo hub. Two years later, during 2021-2022, that number rose to 4,739.

“The figures speak for themselves in terms of what we’ve been doing,” said BCHS Sexual Health Nurse Practitioner  Louise Holland.

“Once we became a hub it meant we could really concentrate on helping reduce the gap in access to services in our region.”

Executive Leader Better Health Graem Kelly said the challenge now was to ensure the continuing financial viability of these services.

“BCHS is strongly invested in providing the highest quality and excellence in sexual and reproductive health with its investment in training and continuing broadening of range of services built from a myriad of funding sources,” he said.

“The real challenge remains in MBS bulk billing not effectively compensating specialised GP and nursing costs.

“Add to this the fact that funding from other sources such as Primary Health Networks and the State Government often falls short in meeting service and delivery costs for the long term sustainability of services and we can see why there is a growing gap in access to sexual and reproductive health and the health system more broadly.”

The Auditor-General’s report examined whether Victorian women could readily access sexual and reproductive health information and services to support their health and wellbeing. It examined four services providers, including BCHS.

Despite the strong Bendigo statistics, the report found The Department of Health “does not know if its hubs have increased Victorian women’s access to sexual and reproductive health services. This is because it is does not have relevant performance measures to determine if, and the extent to which, this program is achieving the Plan’s objective to increase access to services.  It is also not clear that the department placed the hubs where women need them most.”

“At BCHS we are confident that the investments made by the Department of Health in Bendigo have delivered much-needed services to women in need in our area,” Mr Kelly said.

“We welcome the opportunity to work the department in providing sound performance data to give confidence that our services are achieving more than expected in the plan’s objectives.” 

Ms Holland said the report’s findings also showed the conversation needed to turn to training more regional and rural GPs and their nurses to the deliver sexual and reproductive health services where gaps still existed.

She said it was critically important that all of Victoria’s sexual and reproductive health hubs were supported to attract and retain GPs and nurses who were keen to provide sexual and reproductive health services. “We’re already delivering the services in our area, but how do we sustain, maintain and even grow that?” Louise said.

“The Bendigo model shows that what works is experienced nurses working alongside GPs who have an interest in sexual and reproductive health. Bendigo Community Health Services is incredibly fortunate to have GPs who are passionate in this area of health and who will forgo the capacity to earn more money to work in this area in our hub.”

M Holland said, for example, IUD insertion was not as incentivized as other Medical Benefits Scheme items, which meant private practice GPs and nurses could earn more from services such as chronic disease management plans than they could from services such as IUD insertions. She said as such, local GPs were now referring patients to BCHS for their sexual and reproductive health needs.

“We need to train more practitioners, and we need to incentivize them,” Louise said. “At the moment, generally GPs have to travel for training, they have to leave their practice and do the training in Melbourne. It’s very timely that we invest in a regional training hub.”

She said BCHS now had the expertise and drive to develop a training hub in Bendigo. She added this model supported the work of the Royal Women’s Hospital’s Champions Project, which saw Dr Paddy Moore travel to Bendigo and other regional hubs to train GPs in IUDs.

BCHS welcomed not only a demand analysis but an ongoing conversation around patient and practitioner needs following the Auditor-General’s report.

 

Photograph by Imani Bahati on Unsplash.