BUFFALO, N.Y. — Last week it was announced that Kaleida Health would be ending its midwifery program at Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital.
2 On Your Side's Maryalice Demler sat down with Cathi Stack and Christine Covel, two of the midwives whose jobs would be eliminated, and discussed their concerns about the cuts and the strain it will put on nurses and physicians.
Demler: What type of work does a midwife do during labor and delivery?
Stack: So a midwife, especially us here at Suburban Hospital, we are responsible for triaging a mom and a baby - evaluating a situation, almost as if it was an obstetrical emergency room. And communicating with the physicians, you know, what the best plan of action is. We're a very busy labor and delivery unit so we do probably somewhere around 250 deliveries a month.
Demler: You obviously have concerns about the impact. How do you feel it will be detrimental to new moms not having a midwife there for them?
Stack: I feel like that we're leaving the nurses hanging. I mean, they're already so overloaded with work and responsibility. And now you have to factor in - you have new interns who aren't as experienced, you have new nurses who aren't as experienced. So any potential crisis could get much farther along without the eyes and ears behind it to say, 'okay, I smell trouble over there.' Because we're intuitive now, you know, we've gotten to the point where we can probably spot something 20 minutes before it's even going to become a problem and divert it.
Demler: You obviously are going to have the ear of hospital administrators. What is it you would like them to know that perhaps you feel they don't know or understand about your role in labor and delivery?
Stack: It is well documented and well studied that midwifery care when there is a hospital program that includes midwifery care, statistically the outcomes for moms and babies is dramatically better than facilities without midwifery care.
2 On Your Side reached out to Kaleida Health for comment and received the following statement:
“Effective June 1, 2021, Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital will be aligning maternity services to mirror what is currently provided at John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital, Western New York’s Regional Perinatal Center.
“Millard Fillmore Suburban will restructure to provide a more robust physician laborist model of care for women and newborns. This change will raise the level of care on the labor and delivery unit, through increased presence and more direct interaction with OB/GYN.
“What CWA1168 union leadership fails to say with their irresponsible accusations is this: pairing more physicians with our highly skilled nursing staff, pediatric and neonatology specialists will ensure a compassionate high-quality experience for expectant families and their newborns.
“While we know CWA1168 union leadership will continue to fear monger and fight the constantly changing healthcare landscape, Kaleida Health will continue to proactively assess the forces around us and position the organization for the future. For the past few years we have consistently said that, in order to remain viable and strong, we need to run the business differently and better.
“We have an obligation to our community and to the organization itself to be sustainable well into the future. That said, we will continue to make appropriate changes and run the organization based on where health care is going, not where it is today or where it was yesterday.”