Thousands of Victorian women missing out on free midwife service due to eligibility and demand

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Thousands of Victorian women are missing out on a free and popular maternity service praised as being the gold standard in care. The midwifery group practice model allows midwives to support the same woman throughout their pregnancy and birth. But places are limited due to a lack of midwives, forcing many expecting mothers, especially in regional areas, to pay more for antenatal care.

Transcript

00:00Geelong mother Rachel Harkin began motherhood on a good note, partly thanks to having the

00:10same midwife through pregnancy.

00:12For me it was such an empowering experience and I feel so fortunate.

00:19We know that it creates great work for sustainability as well for our midwives and it's actually

00:24cost effective.

00:25But despite the benefits of the free midwifery group practice model, many Victorian women

00:30can't access it.

00:32The ABC contacted over 60 publicly funded Victorian health services with just 17 offering MGP

00:40or primary midwife models of care.

00:42And of those 17 services, most cater for just 20% of births due to eligibility and demand.

00:50How are you feeling pregnancy wise actually?

00:52The shortfall puts the financial burden back on women, particularly in rural and regional

00:57areas where they're forced to pay for one-on-one care.

01:00We're not doing it because it's easier or it's cheaper, we're doing it because we have

01:07personal preferences and that's the care we want.

01:10The aim would be that women had the first option to be able to see being seen freely and

01:14then if they chose to see someone privately that would be at their discretion, not because

01:18they had no other options.

01:20The Victorian Maternity Task Force this month released a report showing the state lags behind

01:25the rest of the country in its offering of continuity of care to women in regional areas.

01:31But the Victorian government and individual health services say they're looking at the

01:35capacity of their programs.

01:37I do think it would really benefit so many people, especially first time parents.

01:42Icl 2002 a movie and eventually encourage myself to leave.

01:44CTo 5 is an subtitle pię precis.

01:49Albert B 첫iedy can sign up a date of a recent видео insurance lead to another

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended