The national picture
According to the San Francisco-based Rock Health, women nationwide have made progress as consumers and providers of health care, but lag behind in leadership roles.
More than 30 years ago, Jeanne Thomas was a young doctor working at a hospital in San Francisco when the male attending surgeon took a breast cancer patient in for surgery in what seemed like hit-or-miss.
“Back then, they didn’t give women choices and women didn’t know if they’d wake up with their breast or not, which today sounds barbaric,” says Thomas, now a surgeon at Lovelace Women’s Hospital in Albuquerque.
That situation has slowly turned around. Women in New Mexico are better served, the result of more women doctors providing services, better diagnostic and treatment options, and better-educated women patients taking control of their own health care, says Thomas.
In addition, the public is more aware of women’s health issues and women themselves are demanding that healthcare organizations respond to their needs.
“I’ve been in practice 30 years, and they didn’t have a breast cancer awareness month back then,” says Thomas. “There are a number of breast care centers in the state, and I don’t think any of them were here 15 years ago.”
The fact that Lovelace has a Women’s Hospital, the only one in the state, speaks volumes about the emphasis on services geared to women.
Likewise, Presbyterian Healthcare Services and University of New Mexico Hospital have expanded services to women, and now far more high-tech diagnostic and treatment tools are available for women across the state.
And that’s not all. Far more women are choosing to play key roles in the field as physicians, nurse midwives and nurse practitioners, to name a few.
Still, with all the progress made in women’s health care, access remains a problem, particularly in rural parts of the state, and especially among Hispanic and Native American women, says Dr. Cheryl Willman, CEO and director of the UNM Cancer Center.
In addition, women remain underrepresented nationwide in top leadership roles in hospitals, medical schools and health-care organizations, she says.
The decision-makers
When it comes to who chooses the health-care provider for a family, it’s more often women. That was a big factor in the rebranding of the Northeast Heights Medical Center in 2004 as Lovelace Women’s Hospital, says Sheri Milone, the hospital’s chief executive officer.
For that reason, the hospital’s look and feel — not just its services and programs — intentionally target women.
“Women look at things like the attitude of the providers, the look of the place, the color, the feel, how our employees and medical staff treat them,” Milone says. “Women are more in tune with that than men for whatever reason, so we designed Lovelace Women’s Hospital to be a place that women want to come back to for more services.”
The hospital’s obstetrics program is still its largest, offering birthing rooms that have a “home-like feel for delivery,” as well as water delivery options and natural birthing options. About 300 babies are delivered there each month, or about 3,600 a year, making it one of the largest birthing centers in New Mexico, Milone says.
The hospital also has a breast care center and is the only one to offer a micro vascular breast reconstruction procedure known as deep inferior epigastric perforator, or DIEP flap, which reshapes a new breast using fat and skin from the abdominal area while leaving the abdominal muscle intact.
The hospital is also building up its cardiology services for women in recognition that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women.
An expansion of services
Roundtable discussions with groups of women led Presbyterian to expand services to women based on what women themselves reported as “important to them in a hospital, important in a health plan and important in a physician’s practice,” says Dr. Tushar Dandade, medical director for women’s services at Presbyterian Healthcare Services.
In response, Presbyterian expanded its six community-based clinics to