Dr Linda Dear: Menodoctor Clinical Director on Pharmac's bid to fund two oestrogen patches

Doctors specialising in menopause have expressed relief following Pharmac's recent u-turn. 

Pharmac has announced it'll fund both the Estradot and Mylan brands of hormone replacement patches from December, after public consultation.

It follows backlash in response to its decision to switch suppliers 

Menodoctor Clinical Director Dr Linda Dear says this is the news they needed to hear. 

She says it's good to have these options because one may work better for some women than the other - and added losing Estradot recently was devastating.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Give a duple ZL and Firemak has done the U
turn on the estrogen petches. So it's going to fund
the old petchestra dot and the new one, the myelin petches.
Because of the backlash, people got upset about this. Doctor
Linda dere is a clinical director, always the clinical director
of MENO doctor and with us. Now, Heylanda, hello, good news.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yes, oh, very good news. Yeah, a relief. This is
what we needed to hear.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Do you think anyone's going to go for the myelind
or is everybody just going to opt for the old one.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well, it's important to say that, you know, some women
actually get on better with my lamb than estradot. So
although yeah, so we can't all just now all rush
out and all want to get estradot patches because basically
then we will run out of them again. Yeah, so
we've got to bear in mind. It's good to have
these options because some women actually get on better with

(00:49):
myelin than estradot, but for other women it was the
other way round. So losing estradoct for those women was
just devastating.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Brilliant. Oh, that's fantastic news. Now, Linda, did you see
the story about the woman who refused an insurance policy
cover over anything to do with her minopause because she
already had it. It was a pre existing health condition. Do
you see that?

Speaker 2 (01:09):
I did, Yeah, sent that to me this morning. I
mean it's a tricky one in that case. I think
they were sort of saying, well, she was already on
some HRT. Therefore email where you could say, well, there's
that preexisting. The way the article was written, though, it
was kind of hard to decipher. But were they saying,
actually it was just if she ever gets anything to

(01:30):
do with peri or menopause, they're not going to cover it.
I don't think that was the message from Southern Cross.
I would hope not. And they do cover menopause consultations
for some specialties, although unfortunately not for my clinic.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Okay, so if you had, if you were covered by insurance,
what is it that you would be claiming related to.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Your menopause, Well, to see a specialist to kind of
get that tailored individualized HRT and assessments. So that might
be an endocrinologist or a guynecologist or a menopause doctor.
Because for a lot of GPS this can be too
complicated and difficult, and it does take a bit more

(02:12):
time in the average fifty minute GP appointment, and we
don't get that much training as GPS on menopause hormone therapy,
so a lot of women do need that extra care,
that extra expertise.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Okay, Linda, thanks very much. I really appreciate your time.
It's Linda dere, the clinical director of Meno Doctor. For
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