The Department of Health and Social Care issued a release setting out plans for a renewed Women’s Health Strategy.

The proposals address the following areas:

• Empowerment: giving women a say in their care via the new “patient power payment” model,

• Improving access to women’s healthcare, and

• Reformed pain relief practices.

Empowerment

The new “patient power payment” model ensures that patient’s voices are listened to and acted on, and that services are held financially accountable to the opinions of their patients.

The government is also committed to bringing organisations representing women together to inform policy and decision making in the future. This ensures that women’s voices will be directly used to inform future decisions, which in turn promotes effective women’s healthcare strategies moving forward.

Access to healthcare

The plan is to introduce new clinical pathways to speed up diagnosis and treatment, via a “single referral point”. This is intended to help improve wait times for women with health issues such as endometriosis, fibroids, heavy periods, urogynaecology and menopause.

There is also a proposal to embed Women’s Health Hubs within the neighbourhood health model. If successful, there is hope these hubs will reduce the pressure on hospital services and hopefully reduce associated waiting times.

These proposals will aim to assist women who are currently facing years-long waits for diagnosis and treatment for common health conditions. In the announcement, the government highlighted that currently 565,000 women are waiting for gynaecological care, with endometriosis taking nearly a decade to diagnose for some patients.

As clinical negligence solicitors we see cases involving delays in diagnosis and treatment of conditions such as gynaecological related cancers, ectopic pregnancies, endometriosis and ovarian cysts far too often.

In one particular case, our client suffered a one and half year delay in diagnosis of endometrial cancer due in part, to an excessively long wait time for a hysteroscopy.

Reformed pain relief practices

Further proposals include significant reforms to tackle “outdated and misogynistic” pain relief practices.

Many women have had to endure painful procedures without pain relief. For instance, a member of our clinical negligence team had her own such experience, regarding the insertion of the contraceptive coil which was recommended by her GP for debilitating menstrual cramps. At the time of booking, she was advised to take some paracetamol or ibuprofen before the procedure. She was not advised that any pain relief or sedation was available. She found the procedure painful and the post-procedure pain was so strong that she collapsed on the floor.

The nurse providing this treatment was likely following accepted guidance and not all patients will experience the same pain levels, but it is important to learn from these experiences and offer a range of pain relief options to support women through this and other medical procedures.

A vast amount of our female clients report that their pain was ignored and dismissed or was attributed to other things. For instance, one client’s case related to a delay in recognising her pain and providing appropriate treatment for an ectopic pregnancy, resulting in her requiring unnecessary surgery.

The Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, has acknowledged that women feel gaslighted by the healthcare system, with painful symptoms treated as an inconvenience or an overreaction.

The proposal for reform is to introduce a new standard of care to ensure that women are offered appropriate and effective pain relief for invasive gynaecological procedures, including contraceptive fitting and hysteroscopies.

The future of the renewed Women’s Health Strategy

As much as the renewed health strategy has been welcomed by many, there is still real scepticism as to how successful it will be in providing the necessary services to women and also making them feel heard. There are still over half a million women waiting for gynaecological care as well as a lack of specialist services for certain conditions.

The report sets out 117 action points and makes several pledges on how women’s care will improve, however there is yet to be implemented a clear roadmap as to how the improved care will be delivered, including how NHS resources (which are already significantly stretched) are to be delegated to delivering these improved services and whether training on spotting and tackling medical misogyny is to be provided.

There will likely need to be an increase in staffing and access to diagnostics as well as a system redesign from hospital to community. Whether or not the NHS is equipped to introduce these requirements effectively is questionable and without appropriating resourcing, the strategy may just be seen as something that works on paper but not in reality.

Streeting’s relaunch of the women’s health strategy will go a long way to reforming women’s health and helping them feel more heard and seen, which is crucial in achieving diagnosis and support for patients. There is a lot to be done however in connection with the strategy, including introducing a clear plan as to how services are to be delivered in the community to ensure effective results, and how resources are to be allocated fairly and how the NHS will tackle medical misogyny.

We hope to see this strategy applied effectively to support the concerns raised by our clients.