‘Vital’ private clinic safeguards Great Southern women from getting lost in regional healthcare limbo

As the Great Southern’s population continues to grow and pressure on the public health system mounts, a specialist clinic has emerged to save oft-forgotten regional patients from falling through the cracks.

The Women’s Health Great Southern clinic opened its doors last April, and provides a spectrum of women’s health treatments with the goal of catching patients lost in the treatment abyss between emergency-level situations and chronic, but benign, issues.

Practice manager and specialist gynaecologist Cliff Neppe said the clinic served as a pressure valve for the public system.

“The public health system is absolutely fantastic if you’re very sick,” he said.

“If you’re not very sick, however, you might have to wait in a queue.

“And sometimes we don’t appreciate the emotional turmoil that a patient goes through — you’re referred to a specialist, you wait months, then you wait for investigations, then you wait for results, then you wait again for the next step.

“It can be nine months down the track, and to a lot of patients, that almost puts their lives on hold.”

For women with gynaecological concerns that are not immediately life-threatening but deeply disruptive, those delays can be exhausting, anxiety-inducing and, in some cases, dangerous.

Mt Barker business owner and mother-of-three Cwen Paget said access to timely care proved critical in her case, with a biopsy revealing two types of cancerous cells in her cervix.

“They told me it had already started to spread a bit,” she said.

“If I’d waited months in the public system, we would have met a very different result, surgery-wise, and the outcome could have been very different.

“The funny thing is, months after my procedure, I actually got a letter in the mail from the public system saying I had a booking for a biopsy.

“It’s a bit daunting to think about, but I’m very lucky I got on to it very early, and surgery was really good.”

A 2022 WA Country Health Service report acknowledged the Albany Health Campus, the region’s largest public hospital, had an inability “to meet patient care demand due to facility capacity, which can lead to delays or adverse outcomes to consumers”.

An allocation of $1 million listed in the 2025–26 State Budget for a 30-bed modular ward — intended as a temporary solution to increase bed capacity — reflects the growing strain.

For nurse Cassandra Felton, who waited six months for an initial appointment in the public system when she developed gynaecological issues, that experience was particularly confronting given that she works within the medical system herself.

“I see people waiting so long for procedures and answers, and getting lost in the system,” she said.

“So to find myself lost in the system was horrifying.”

Ms Felton said knowing how the system worked made the wait more difficult. “I know the big words, I know what goes on behind the scenes, and when they sent me for a test, I’d know what it’s for and think ‘Oh, what are they thinking?’,” she said.

“I’d look at my test results and think, ‘Why is that number elevated?’ The anxiety just goes through the roof. “I was starting to struggle emotionally and mentally from being in pain every single day.”

After waiting months on the public health system list, Ms Felton was relieved when, within weeks of seeing Dr Neppe, she had undergone screenings, a procedure, and begun treatment, which confirmed there was nothing more serious underlying her symptoms.

“To finally have answers was such a relief,” she said.

“It felt like a long road for something that was actually quite simple on the spectrum of things.”

Eighty-year-old Constance Meyers said the burden of travelling to Perth for specialist care was becoming unbearable and increasingly anxiety-inducing.

Before moving from Kendenup to Albany, she and her late husband made countless trips to Perth over the years for medical appointments, with the journeys becoming increasingly difficult as his health declined. “He was a naval veteran and had lots of problems with his hips and knees, and had multiple replacements,” Ms Meyers said.

“Travelling was very hard on him.

“We had to arrange accommodation, make sure everything was level and accessible, which was very difficult.”

Being able to walk into the local clinic, only a short driving distance from her Albany home, was a stark contrast.

“Coming in here is like visiting a friend,” Ms Meyers said.

“It’s quiet, clean, not clinical, and very homely, and the nurses were gentle and reassuring, which really makes a difference when you’re already a bit nervous.”

Ms Meyers said the city’s older demographic made the clinic — which offers almost the full gamut of women’s health treatments under one roof, and collaborates with various specialists including a fertility clinic, physiotherapist, dietitian, sex therapist, and psychiatrist — even more vital.

“Now so many older people are moving to Albany because of the hospital, I think, and both young and old need these facilities here,” she said.

Dr Neppe said continuity of care was one of the biggest advantages of smaller specialist services, and to make sure patients did not fall through the gaps.

“In the public system, it’s really hard to maintain continuity with the same practitioner — it’s just not designed that way,” he said

“Ongoing surveillance is required in women’s health. You don’t want patients lost to follow-up.”

He said the clinic was not a replacement for the public hospital, but a complement to it.

“There are things I can only do publicly, like hysterectomies,” Dr Neppe said.

“But if someone is waiting up to a year for surgery that’s affecting their quality of life — heavy bleeding, prolapse — that’s a long time to live like that.

“For a long time, if women wanted to choose their specialist, they had to go to Perth.

“This at least offers another option locally.”

Ms Felton said the clinic’s presence in Albany indicated a move in the right direction for the women’s health industry.

“It wasn’t talked about before, and . . . not much research and things went into it,” she said.

“But now I feel like it’s more openly talked about, and a lot more research is going into things and different procedures and medications, and it’s becoming a lot bigger and more proficient.

“I think things are moving in the right direction for us.”