Featured Guide:
Hospital Guide to Integrating the Freestanding Birth Center Model
This guide collates critical tools, information, and resources to help hospitals and health systems integrate the freestanding birth center model, an evidence-based strategy to improve maternal and infant health outcomes and equity. Get step-by-step instructions and specialized tools designed for and with hospitals, birth centers, and community members to accelerate the safe adoption of birth centers.
About the Guide
The guide is organized into four sections based on the lessons learned and expressed needs of hospitals and birth centers throughout the country:
-
The Assessing Readiness for Birth Center Integration chapter outlines five steps to developing an integration plan specific to health systems’ priorities and the needs of local communities. In this section, hospitals and health systems learn about the birth center model, identify birth centers operating locally, conduct a community needs assessment and recruit champions. This section offers guidance on combining these learnings into an integration strategy that considers the market conditions and community priorities unique to your health system.
-
The Partnership or Ownership? Understanding Integration Approaches chapter helps to determine the appropriate integration strategy based on previously identified needs and priorities within your health system and local community. This section defines the necessary components of a successful integration strategy (staff time, education, a culture of collaboration, referrals and an investment in safety and quality) and describes in detail the strategic pathways to hospital adoption of the birth center model—partnership (smooth transfers and investment) or ownership (acquisition or building new).
-
The Establishing and Maintaining Quality chapter focuses on critical tools and tactics to support and manage the delivery of high-quality care, with a particular focus on smooth and positive transfers. This section examines the role of hospitals in fostering relationships between facility providers and implementing processes and protocols that promote collaboration and lead to better outcomes. This chapter details the drills, training and chart review necessary to achieve high-performing collaborative relationships between a hospital and birth center.
-
Finally, the Financial and Business Case Considerations chapter examines the many practical, how-to realities of promoting financially sustainable birth centers. This chapter outlines the critical components to assembling a birth center budget, contracting with payors, and structuring payment to promote consultation and collaboration among providers. The section culminates by looking toward innovative payment models that promote birth center integration.
Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Download, adapt, and use tools below, developed by Primary Maternity Care to support hospital-birth center integration.
These and other tools are featured in the Guide.
-
Hospital-Birth Center Transfer Agreement
Featured in: Partnership or Ownership Understanding Integration Approaches
-
Birth Center Job Descriptions
Featured in: Partnership or Ownership? Understanding Integration Approaches
-
Staffing Model
Featured in: Partnership or Ownership? Understanding Integration Approaches
-
Birth Center Eligibility and Midwife-Physician Collaborative Care Guidelines
Featured in: Establishing and Maintaining Quality
-
Birth Center Stakeholder Map
Featured in: Assessing Readiness for Birth Center Integration
-
Birth Center Checklists
Featured in: Establishing and Maintaining Quality
Integrating the Freestanding Birth Center Model with Hospital Services Webinar
The Institute for Perinatal Quality Improvement (PQI) hosted the authors of the The Hospital Guide to Integrating the Freestanding Birth Center Model to share best practices and implementation efforts as part of PQI’s Innovation Webinar Series. The webinar recording is designed to be a resource for hospitals, health systems and birth centers to strengthen hospital-birth center collaboration.
The collaboration
About the Purchaser Business Group on Health
Purchaser Business Group on Health (PBGH) is a nonprofit coalition representing nearly 40 private employers and public entities across the United States that collectively spend $350 billion annually purchasing health care services for more than 21 million Americans and their families. PBGH has a 30-year track record of incubating and scaling new, disruptive operational programs that lower health care costs and increase quality.
About Primary Maternity Care
Primary Maternity Care (PMC) is a service design and consulting firm with a mission to enable integrated, high quality reproductive and perinatal care by strengthening systems for patient engagement, quality improvement, value-based payment, and community-based care delivery. PMC works with stakeholders across the system to design and implement innovative solutions that improve outcomes, equity, and cost.