Photo: Anna Zhu
" alt="A midwifery academic and student midwife consults with a mother-to-be" title="Reform is needed to improve maternity health care services in Australia">Writing in the Medical Journal of Australia, Professor Caroline Homer has advocated for urgent and widespread reform to maternity services in Australia.High-level evidence shows that women are better off both physically and psychologically when they are able to access midwifery-led continuity of care.
Yet barely one in 10 Australian women has access to this model of care.
Professor Homer examined several studies to determine the clinical outcomes, the views of women and midwives and the health services costs.
"This is not alternative anymore – this is mainstream care and something that all public health services should be providing," she said.
"If we had a drug that made a difference, from a systematic review of 15 trials, but we only gave it to 8 per cent of people who could benefit from it, wouldn't that be a problem? Because it's a model of care, it's seen as OK not to provide because it's too hard and requires organisational change," she said.