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...

W from rural and remote communi t ies with no local access to maternity services have worse maternal and newborn outcomes than women from similar communities with local access to even limited birthing services.1 Canadian studies have demonstrated that distance to services affects maternal and newborn outcomes.2–4 Perinatal mortality is higher for populations of women who are more than 4 hours a...

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...

BACKGROUND The development of medical-led care in obstetrics over the past decades has contributed to improving outcomes for both mother and child. Although efficiency has improved in complex situations, unnecessary interventions are still practiced in low-risk pregnancies, contrary to international recommendations. A shift to a less interventionist model of care has encouraged many countries t...

For 22 years I delivered babies as a family physician—22 years of wearing a pager 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was amazingly invigorating and inspiring, and at times onerous and overwhelming. September is the perfect time to talk about delivering babies—9 months after New Year’s, it is always a busy month in labour and delivery. This is a National Physician Survey (NPS) year, and one of th...

BACKGROUND Health services research is a well-articulated research methodology and can be a powerful vehicle to implement sustainable health service reform. This paper presents a summary of a five-year collaborative program between stakeholders and researchers that led to sustainable improvements in the maternity services for remote-dwelling Aboriginal women and their infants in the Top End (TE...