At-home women’s healthcare trend: good or bad?

By keito

As time goes on, women’s health issues are being addressed more and more within the comfort of a woman’s own home.  Adding on to this is a recent expansion of the over the counter availability of the Plan B “Morning-After Pill” to include 17 year-olds, and a new, well-advertised at-home fertility test for women.

Are increasing home health options for women a good thing, like product ads would like us to believe?  Evaluating your own health using generic tests at home, or taking a drug without at least reading up on it, are two things that can easily result in misconceptions about or even damages to your own health and wellbeing.

Using at home fertility kits to evaluate fertility, for example, is kind of like saying that because you can pick up a basketball you can be a basketball player.  First Response’s at-home fertility evaluation kit features a big asterisk that says the kit only tests levels of FSH (follicle stimulating hormone), which would indicate release of an egg, and not whether there are physical obstructions or other factors that could prevent pregnancy.  In a sense, it gives you the first few pencil marks on a sheet of paper, not the whole picture.

Home tests like First Response’s, however, can be a way for women to start a health-evaluation on their own terms.  When ABC News reported in 2007 on the fertility kit Fertell, which evaluates both a man and a woman’s fertility using an FSH test, they quoted Dr. Harry Fisch from the Columbia University Medical Center as saying that FSH “is the first test we look for when a woman comes for an evaluation…This test is not a guarantee that you’re fertile or not.  But it’s a great start.”

The same goes for at-home tests that can detect vaginal infections: a litmus test of the vagina shows the pH levels, which may or may not indicate some kind of infection.  As Tracee Cornforth writes on About.com, “you should know that not all vaginal infections cause changes to vaginal pH. This means that having a normal vaginal pH test does not mean that you do not have a vaginal infection.” In most cases, a visit to the doctor would still be necessary for an accurate answer.

Well, thanks for nothing!

The positive side of at-home evaluations like these is that it can give women a sense of control and privacy when it comes to their own health and bodies.  A false sense, perhaps, since a doctor should be the one evaluating your health and fertility, and regular check-ups are necessary, for women and for men, to catch problems before they turn into health catastrophes.  There’s absolutely nothing private about a person’s health when they choose to handle it responsibly.

However, a woman who habitually visits her gynecologist because of infections might find the home pH test for infections useful, because some treatments are also available over the counter.  And suppose you are trying to get pregnant: can you imagine having to go to the doctor every time you wanted to take a pregnancy test?  That would be ridiculous, and quite frankly your doctor doesn’t want to see you that often, either.

So what about the prescription-free Plan B?  There are certainly a lot of women who would prefer to try taking the drug, which can prevent fertilization, delay ovulation or prevent the uterine implantation of an egg that has been fertilized, than to face either of the options available if she does become pregnant.  Though pregnancy and abortion are hotly contested polar opposites, what they do have in common is that both require visits to the doctor.

What if a doctor visit isn’t possible for the woman, especially in a time period where many are losing or have lost their jobs and health insurance?  Isn’t it still important to have a certain standard of healthcare available?

Though at-home tests and treatments can be downright critical when a woman lacks insurance, the flipside is that, despite our being in a malpractice age, where the word of a doctor is not the gold standard like it was for our grandparents, medical professionals still (generally) know best — even if you have to get a second opinion or two now and then.

If at home treatments and evaluations are an alternative to no evaluations or treatments at all, then, taking them for what they are as a whole (i.e. ignoring any personal objections, preferences or experiences), they can’t be a completely bad thing.  The theory behind it is actually almost good.  It’s just the practice that could use some work.

I don’t know about you, but I want to live in a country where some degree of healthcare is always available, regardless of insurance or financial status.  At-home health care may not be the best thing, but it can be better than nothing at all.