Midwives want to bridge the gap in maternity care
Posted January 23, 2014 3:53 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – BC’s midwives are pushing for their services to be used twice as often in the Health Care system.
Midwives want the province to bridge what they call a gap in maternity care, especially for women in rural communities.
Ganga Jolicoeur, the executive director of the Midwives Association of BC, says integrating more midwives into the health care system would save our province money.
“Independent analysis shows that implementing our recommendations would result in net savings of approximately 60 million dollars by 2020 and 20 million dollars annually thereafter.”
“Our vision is about improving access to maternity care, improving health outcomes, and delivering cost savings to make better use of limited health-care dollars,” adds Jolicoeur.
Currently 17 per cent of women in BC use midwives as their primary maternal care-giver.
The Midwives Association of British Columbia recommendations are:
- Increased access to quality maternity care, especially in rural, northern and First Nations communities
- Improvements in health outcomes for women and newborns
- More options for women to choose their maternity care provider
- Reduced pressure on family physicians working in underserved communities
- Reduced Caesarean rates and obstetrical interventions
- A realistic and achievable solution to close the growing maternity care gap
- Net cost savings of approximately $60 million that can go towards other health care priorities
The initiative would cost $21-million cumulatively to put into place.
