The business of maternity services.

It may well be of benefit to maternity services if all providing care within it viewed their service as a family business. How would you as a midwife expect your business to run? How would you ensure you had the right staff in place at the right time to deliver first-class quality services to all your customers? How would you ensure you attracted enough business to make your service viable and cost-effective? How would you measure your service’s success and deal with complaints or dissatisfied customers? Arguably, these questions pose exactly the same challenges facing maternity services today. Falling birth rates, recruitment and retention issues, utilisation of resources, user involvement and satisfaction outcomes – all familiar concepts for midwives, yet many would never view their service as needing to be run like a family business.