Needs
We have had our Community Birth Center up and running for nearly four years. This facility allows us to provide personalized, family-centered care for even more healthy people before, during, and after normal pregnancy, labor, and birth. The yearly cost to utilize the space including rent and utilities is over $57,000.
Freestanding birth centers achieve better outcomes than hospitals on quality measures such as the cesarean rate for low-risk clients, elective delivery prior to 39 weeks, and breastfeeding. Our Community Birth Center saves health dollars and reduces the risk of complications during and following childbirth, particularly for families on Medi-Cal (90% of our clients/patients).
We offer high-touch, low-tech care which inherently lowers our cost for medical supplies. However, we are required to keep certain life-saving equipment stocked such as oxygen, sterilized instruments, medicines for bleeding, antibiotics, local anesthesia, IV fluids, suture kits, and newborn medications. We continue to see a decrease in the availability of basic supplies and personal protective equipment, which has fueled very creative solutions and waste-reduction policies at our birth center. Overall, our organization spent $6,324 on medical supplies in 2021, a decrease of over $10,000 from 2020.
WHMS is run by an all-volunteer Board of Directors and is staffed largely by Student Midwives enrolled in MEAC-accredited midwifery education programs. Students enroll in our clinical training programs because they are passionate about serving our community and increasing the breadth of humane, dignified maternity care options available to our region.
We value the time and effort each Student Midwife contributes to our mission by reimbursing them for their out-of-pocket expenses such as mileage, home-cooked meals for clients, and monthly on-call cellphone usage. We also stipend Student Midwives for each birth they attend as a care provider. The average cost per Student Midwife is $26,000.
Rather than just keeping up with caring for our clients, we finally had time and energy to strengthen our billing capacity this year. In partnership with the California Association of Licensed Midwives Medi-Cal Task Force, Welcome Home has successfully executed contracts with eight of the major Managed Care Medi-Cal plans (a first for Licensed Midwives in our region), including two new plans in 2021. We continue to attempt to negotiate contracts with health plans in Sacramento, Yolo, Placer, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Yuba, Sutter, and Nevada Counties. Our malpractice insurance premiums, required in order for our practice to bill Medi-Cal, totaled about $10,000 this year.