The components of this toolkit can be used by clinicians who are providing maternity care, trainers or educators of clinicians who will be providing maternity care, supervisors of clinicians who provide maternity care, program managers who develop and manage programs with a maternity care component, and by policy makers or other key stakeholders who want to promote RMC in the programs for which...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES High maternity-related health care spending is often cited as an important barrier in utilizing quality health care during pregnancy and childbirth. This study has two objectives: (i) to measure the levels of expenditure on total maternity care in disaggregated components such as ANCs, PNCs, and Natal care expenditure; (ii) to quantify the extent of catastrophic matern...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the maternal and perinatal outcomes of Alberta's regionalized system of care. In particular, to compare the outcomes of communities with limited or no local intrapartum care with those of regional and tertiary care centres. METHODS We conducted a population-based retrospective study of all Alberta deliveries in 1999 and 2000. Maternal outcome measures were rates of patie...

INTRODUCTION Between 2000 and 2004, 17 small rural maternity care services in British Columbia (BC) closed or were placed under moratoria. This paper explores the experiences of care providers in 4 rural BC communities that have lost or are at risk of losing their local maternity services. METHODS We conducted qualitative, semistructured interviews and focus groups with 27 health care provide...

BACKGROUND Improving adherence to care standards is one way to improve quality of delivered care. This study aimed to determine the degree of providers' adherence to maternity care standards from the perspective of pregnant women. METHODS This cross-sectional study was conducted on 185 pregnant women in their ninth month of pregnancy who received maternity care from health centres in Tabriz, ...

There are significant health disparities in maternity care in the United States. One way to decrease these disparities may be to improve prenatal care among underserved minority women. This article reviews cultural and ethnic issues that may impact maternity care within 5 different groups of women commonly seen by maternity care providers in Wisconsin: African American, Latina, Hmong, Amish, an...

BACKGROUND A lack of standard terminology or means to identify and define models of maternity care in Australia has prevented accurate evaluations of outcomes for mothers and babies in different models of maternity care. OBJECTIVE As part of the Commonwealth-funded National Maternity Data Development Project, a classification system was developed utilising a data set specification that define...

BACKGROUND This study aims to give insight into the opinions of maternity care professionals and other stakeholders on the integration of midwife-led care and obstetrician-led care and on the facilitating and inhibiting factors for integrating maternity care. METHODS Qualitative study using interviews and focus groups from November 2012 to February 2013 in the Netherlands. Seventeen purposive...

A new Milbank Report focuses on the potential to greatly improve maternity care in the United States through greater fidelity to evidence-based practice. The report, authored by Carol Sakala and Maureen Corry, was developed collaboratively by Childbirth Connection and the Milbank Memorial Fund along with members of the Reforming States Group. Childbirth Connection is a national, notfor-profit o...