00:00One of Birmingham's most important women's health services is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
00:08The Modality Women's Health Hub started as a single monthly clinic in Aston and now supports women across the city.
00:16Well, I was a GP working in Aston at the time and I could see our patients waiting not as
00:22long as they are now
00:23and going to their appointment and coming back confused about the condition that they had, the treatment.
00:30And so I thought, why are they going to hospital in the first place?
00:35So that was one of the founding questions. Why does a woman need to go to hospital?
00:39And then the other thing is really giving them information to arm them to be able to manage their conditions
00:45in a holistic way,
00:46which is what we're really good at in the community.
00:48Well, 10 years on and the hub says it supports nearly 14,000 women every year,
00:54providing specialist gynecological care outside hospital.
00:58It says just 7.8% of patients require onward referral to secondary care.
01:04The focus now is on how the service continues to develop as women's needs change.
01:10And it started off as being a sexual health, family planning, and it's moved on to community gynecology.
01:17So during the time of COVID, just after COVID, there were long waiting lists.
01:20So we helped one of the local trusts seeing their women that were waiting for more than two years.
01:25You know, it's not just about seeing them. We do hysteroscopies here. We do procedures here.
01:30So anything that doesn't require a general anaesthetic can be done.
01:33And women don't need to be seen in hospital for every single thing.
01:37So a woman who's struggling, I would say to them, is there is help out there?
01:41Don't suffer in silence. See your GP. There are resources online and your GP can refer you on to a
01:49hub like ours, which is so accessible.
01:51So, yeah, the main thing is don't suffer and seek help early rather than wait longer.
01:56So Modality Partnership is a primary care super partnership.
02:01We look after half a million patients over 56 different sites.
02:04Our general practice partnership set up the specialist outpatient clinics so that we could deliver care to patients in facilities
02:13that were nearer their home and delivered by clinicians that they already knew.
02:18We know that women find services difficult to access and we know that we have improved access.
02:24We've improved diagnostic rates and we've improved patients' lives.
02:28Patricia McCatty has been involved with the hub from the beginning and has recently received the honorary title of Queen's
02:36Nurse, recognising her commitment to high standards of patient care, learning and leadership.
02:43Today is our 10 year anniversary and it means a lot to the staff and to the patients that we
02:48support.
02:49I know the service has improved the health of thousands of women locally and I would love the service to
02:54be rolled out nationally so that more women can reap the benefits.
