Testosterone prescribing for hrt

As a practice, we have decided to not prescribe testosterone to any female patients for low libido as part of their HRT prescription. This decision has been made as a team after careful consideration and for the following reasons:

1. Testosterone is not currently a licensed medication for any menopausal symptoms, and as GPs we are under no obligation to prescribe medications outside of their licensed use. 

2. All testosterone products require ongoing monitoring. There is currently no shared care agreement in place with secondary care clinicians for prescribing testosterone and for the ongoing blood monitoring that is required for this medication. We are unable to take on this unfunded work as we do not have the capacity to meet the patient demand. 

We appreciate that some of our patients will be disappointed by this decision but we hope that you can appreciate the reasons behind this. If you wish to be prescribed testosterone as part of HRT you would need to be referred to secondary care to request their initiation and ongoing monitoring of this medication.