North Hawaii Community Hospital’s efforts to trim maternal health costs brought midwifery supporters to the hospital Monday afternoon.
North Hawaii Community Hospital’s efforts to trim maternal health costs brought midwifery supporters to the hospital Monday afternoon.
About 30 people attended a rally outside the hospital.
“It’s really a consumer-driven protest,” said Dani Kennedy, secretary for the Midwives Alliance of Hawaii.
People in the group included pregnant women, who had messages painted on their stomachs, women with babies, grandparents and even a man who did not yet have children, but wanted to show his support for the hospital’s midwifery model. Hospital CEO Ken Wood last week told West Hawaii Today the maternal health services program lost about $1.4 million in the last year, because of low reimbursements for services. He denied claims, raised by hospital employees, that the hospital planned to lay off two of the hospital’s three full-time nurse midwives.
“We’re here to say, we understand it’s a problem, but this is not an answer,” Kennedy said. “We need more midwives, not less.”
Cutting the number of midwives wouldn’t just cut services to pregnant women, Kennedy said, but also general women’s services as well.
Kennedy, who is certified to be a midwife for home births, said part of the problem is midwives in Hawaii do not qualify for insurance reimbursement. In Idaho, where Kennedy lived before moving here, they do. When Big Island women are adamant about having a midwife-assisted delivery, rather than having an obstetrician do the delivery, North Hawaii Community Hospital’s program is their only choice, she said.
“Midwifery is woman centered,” Kennedy said. “They are not trained in emergencies. Midwives are the experts in normal births and normal pregnancy.”
Obstetricians having training that focuses on high risk pregnancy and birth and are able to perform Cesarean section deliveries, she added.
She was concerned that if women are unable to choose North Hawaii’s midwife program, and they cannot afford to pay the out-of-pocket expenses to have a midwife-assisted birth at home, they will choose an unassisted birth at home before they deliver in a hospital. North Hawaii’s consideration of changing the program is a move backwards, against the trend on the mainland, where midwifery is becoming more recognized, not less, Kennedy claimed.
“It was really a beautiful set up,” she said. “It was ahead of its time and kind of progressive.”
Wood on Monday reiterated that any possible changes are several weeks down the road, with a task force now being put together to discuss ways the hospital can cut or recover its maternal health services costs. He said the task force will meet weekly for six weeks, and he hopes to hear suggestions by the end of April.
He didn’t see the rally, but he said he didn’t consider it a protest.
“I saw it as people saying, ‘We support midwifery,’” he said. “We do, too. I was pleased to see people passionate about midwifery.”
Wood said he was also pleased with Kona Community Hospital’s response to his inquiries about expanding midwifery programs to that hospital. Two hospital officials agreed to join his task force, he said.
Kona Community Hospital CEO Jay Kreuzer, contacted on the mainland Monday, said he hasn’t spoken with Wood about any program expansion. Kreuzer said he and Wood had discussed North Hawaii’s maternal health services costs.