Wednesday, February 24, 2021

County Closes Prenatal Clinic / El condado cierra la clínica prenatal



County Closes Prenatal Clinic; New Birth Center Needed

Closure of County Prenatal Clinic underscores need for autonomous, nonprofit birth center


Español: Comunicado: Cambios en el cuidado prenatal en el condado de Lane, febrero 2021


Lane County, OR – February 2021 – Community Health Centers of Lane County closed its Prenatal Clinic at the end of January. This clinic primarily provided Medicaid and uninsured clients with prenatal and postpartum midwifery care at the Charnelton Health Clinic (CHC) in downtown Eugene. Before the closure, pregnant people in Lane County often chose the Prenatal Clinic because of its wrap around services, easy access to care without discrimination, and integrated Spanish speaking staff throughout the clinic. The Prenatal Clinic recently transferred all clients’ care to private practices in the area. The closure of the Prenatal Clinic is a significant loss of health care access and support for our community.


What will be lost as a result of the CHC Prenatal Clinic closure?

  • A prenatal care safety net, more specifically, a clinic that doesn’t “fire” clients for missing appointments or not paying bills. 

  • Integrated Spanish-speaking staff throughout services including a Spanish-speaking lactation consultant and care coordinator.

  • Prenatal care integrated with other Lane County services such as primary care, mental health care, and WIC.


María Paz Aguirre, Latinx community member and facilitator of Our Community Birth Center’s recent Latinx focus group, says “There’s a real need of services in our native language. We prefer to have services in our native language because interpreters are not always the best. In hospitals and clinics we have seen that information in our native language is not always easy to find. Right now there’s almost no places where you can find that. Thinking about Our Community Birth Center, it is a place that can do that.”


Our Community Birth Center is developing an equitable and inclusive nonprofit community clinic that provides perinatal and general health care for people in Lane County.  Our community needs and deserves accessible nonprofit community-based health care for pregnancy, birth, and beyond. The closure of the only Federally Qualified Health Center providing prenatal care in the Eugene-Springfield area makes this need more urgent, and Our Community Birth Center will fill the gap in care that was created when the PeaceHealth Nurse Midwifery Birth Center closed in 2019, and which has now widened significantly as a result of the Lane County Prenatal Clinic closure.

Birth center care is proven to contribute to improved outcomes for parents and babies.  These outcomes include: lower rates of cesarean birth and higher rates of healthy normal birth; lower rates of preterm birth and low birth weight babies; increased lactation success; high client satisfaction; and significantly lower costs to the health care system (Strong Start for Mothers and Newborns, 2018). Our Community Birth Center’s programs specialize in care of the childbearing person, and include pregnancy counseling, newborn care, lactation services, women’s and family health care, LGBTQIA+ health care, family planning, childbirth and lactation classes, peer support, and postpartum home-visits. 


In addition, Our Community Birth Center will integrate Spanish-speaking staff, access to language interpretation, and support for those who do not have insurance or cannot afford to pay for care. Our Community Birth Center also has plans to add primary care services to ensure wrap around care and support for pregnancy and beyond. 


"All of the midwives I had the honor to be treated by gave me the courage to trust my own body and ultimately they played an essential role in my ability to achieve a healthy, all natural birthing outcome. When I think about my daughter’s birth I don’t remember the pain. Instead, I remember the support I felt. I remember progressing through the experience on my own terms. I strongly feel that Our Community Birth Center will pick up where the CHC Prenatal Clinic and the PeaceHealth Nurse Midwifery Birth Center left off and be able provide this much needed level of patient-centered care to future expecting mothers,” Ren McLemore, Prenatal Clinic and Birth Center parent and Lane County Friends of the Birth Center board member.


Do you have questions about prenatal health care options in Lane County? Our Community Birth Center offers free health care options counseling in Spanish and English. Contact us at OurCommunityBirthCenter@gmail.com to ask a question or schedule a phone call.


Contacts


Our Community Birth Center

Lane County Friends of the Birth Center


 

Monday, July 13, 2020

Stepping Into the Future with Our Community Birth Center

Our community has spoken loud and clear about the demand for an accredited, freestanding nurse midwifery birth center in Lane County. We are absolutely thrilled that Our Community Birth Centera new nonprofit organization in Lane County is actively working to open one! 



These mosaic stepstones were created by guests at the former birth center's farewell open house, 
and will be gifted to the new birth center when it opens. 

Learn More: 


How Can I Help?





Friday, October 11, 2019

Birth Center Updates: Farewell Event, Doula Support, and the Future

It is with sadness that we share there will be a farewell event for the PeaceHealth Nurse Midwifery Birth Center in November. Despite a groundswell of community support and a strong campaign, PeaceHealth is closing the Nurse Midwifery Birth Center and repurposing the building. For the time being, women in our community will no longer have the option of a birth center birth. We won’t rehash the many arguments in support of the current birth center model here, but as we all know, this is a loss to our community.

Everyone who wishes to honor and say farewell to the Nurse Midwifery Birth Center please stay tuned for more information to follow. We are in communication with PeaceHealth regarding plans for this event and will announce the details as soon as they are available. If you are unable to attend, the Birth Center is also open during Baby Clinic hours every Tuesday from 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm through November 22.

Because PeaceHealth has fired its staff midwives and now makes available only obstetricians and midwives employed by a private practice, there are not enough midwives to provide 24-7 midwifery services at RiverBend Hospital. This means that families who planned care with the birth center midwives may not receive midwifery care at RiverBend Hospital. We understand this is a very challenging time for families who will not be able to have the birth care they had planned and we want to support them as much as possible.

The Friends of the Birth Center are currently focused on supporting these families who have been forced to change care providers late in their pregnancy. This support includes answering questions we receive and creating a program to ensure that families who have lost their midwives have access to doula care. Birth Center families who are currently pregnant and due in October, November or December may contact The Friends of the Birth Center at lanecofbc@gmail.com for information about doulas. Scholarships are available to help families expecting babies this Fall access doula care, regardless of ability to pay. A doula is not a midwife and does not provide medical care; rather, doulas are trained and certified to provide support to birthing parents throughout every stage. Research shows that doula support improves birth outcomes (https://evidencebasedbirth.com/the-evidence-for-doulas/).

The Friends of the Birth Center remains committed to supporting a freestanding birth center in our community and will continue to advocate for this option. We are excited to share that plans are underway for a new community birth center in Lane County! This new organization will make a public announcement soon, which we look forward to sharing. We will continue to update all of you, Nurse Midwifery Birth Center families and the community, regarding where to find your midwives and your birth center in the future.

Friday, September 13, 2019

Thank You to the Lane County Board of Commissioners

Hello Lane County Board of Commissioners,

The Lane County Friends of the Birth Center would like to express our appreciation for your support of birth center care in our region. We are grateful for the opportunity to educate the Board of Commissioners and the public about the value of midwifery care for so many families across Lane County at the work session you convened. We look forward to your continued support as we pursue ways to ensure that this low-cost, high-quality form of community healthcare remains accessible.

The demand for midwifery care in Lane County will not disappear simply because PeaceHealth has decided to close its Nurse Midwifery Birth Center. Women and families in Lane County continue to demand healthcare choice. October marks the beginning of the gap in care that we discussed during our work session. In October, there will be no local hospitals offering 24-7 access to midwife attended births. As of August 31, there is no longer an option for birthing in a freestanding birth center. PeaceHealth continues to staff the Community Health Clinic with midwives to provide prenatal and postpartum care only; those midwives will no longer be allowed to attend births at RiverBend Hospital starting October 1. In addition, we recently learned that the Community Health Clinic stopped accepting clients with private insurance this summer. This means there is nowhere in Lane County where a privately insured pregnant woman can schedule her initial pregnancy care appointment with a Certified Nurse Midwife. We respectfully request that the Board of Commissioners revise this policy so that privately insured women can receive care at the Lane County Prenatal Clinic at the Community Health Clinic. This would prevent loss of access to midwifery care in the clinic setting and would contribute to a healthy start for some of our newest citizens.

We hope you agree that this is one concrete way to make midwifery care accessible to more people in Lane County. We look forward to your response. Please contact Lane County Friends of the Birth Center if we can provide more information or assistance.

We appreciate your ongoing support as we work together to ensure access to midwifery care in Lane County!

Thank you,

Lane County Friends of the Birth Center