The New Yorker: The Cost Conundrum
For 28 years, the PeaceHealth Nurse Midwifery Birth Center has provided accessible, affordable and outstanding mother-baby care in line with current efforts to emphasize preventive health care. At the June 2nd news conference announcing construction of the new Birth Center at RiverBend, Friends of the Birth Center offered the following description:
Among the finest in the nation, the PeaceHealth Birth Center provides affordable, accessible services with phenomenal outcomes in line with national and international standards for excellence in mother-baby care and breastfeeding. Along with being a well-loved and valued part of our community, the Birth Center is ahead of national efforts to better deploy limited health care resources.
Unique for providing a continuum of services before, during and after birth, the Birth Center model of care provides need-blind service and an emphasis on client-provider partnerships, education and prevention. Its emphasis on normalcy and healthfulness yields fewer billable procedures than the medical care model. Families, employers and insurers including public programs funded by taxpayers, appreciate lower costs, especially today. Savings continue postpartum through the Birth Center’s 24-hour breastfeeding consultation service and a weekly well-baby drop-in clinic. This upfront investment means fewer visits to the doctor and missed days at work.
The foundation of Birth Center care is its out-of-hospital setting. This critical feature promotes and protects the non-medical space in which women who use it want to give birth and initiate breastfeeding. Because the Birth Center exists within the health care delivery system, many women believe they receive the best of both care models. Consumers describe it as an incomparably valuable and necessary option for establishing family.
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