Dear
Bleak future for private homebirth midwives
In the past week the Australian Health Ministers have issued the draft laws
for the new national registration scheme for health professionals. As we
expected, the laws will require all midwives from 1 July 2010 to hold
professional indemnity insurance for their practice (clause 69). What we
did not expect however, is an additional clause that specifies that every
aspect of care provided by a registered health professional will have to be
covered by indemnity or else disciplinary action may be taken (clause 101).
Employed midwives will meet this requirement via the vicarious liability
provided by their employer. But midwives in private practice are still not
able to purchase insurance. The combination of clauses 69 and 101 of the
national registration bill means that midwives will not be able to care for
women to birth at home unless they have insurance to do so, effective from 1
July 2010.
The federal health minister Nicola Roxon, has committed to helping midwives
who will provide Medicare funded care from 1 November 2010 to access
affordable professional indemnity insurance. Unfortunately this does not
include care of women who labour and give birth at home.
The effect of these changes will be to deprive midwives in private practice
providing care for homebirth of their livelihood. Even more gravely, it
will also reduce women's access to professional midwifery care for birth at
home. ACM is concerned that this may mean some women feel they have no
choice but to give birth without a qualified midwife in attendance.
ACM issued a media release
<
http://www.midwives.org.au/News/Coll...5/Default.aspx on Friday 19 June on this matter and the issue received widespread coverage. We are also lobbying all federal and state governments
and political parties to provide support for midwives to access professional
indemnity for all of their regulated scope of practice - which includes care
of women during pregnancy, labour and birth and postnatally in any setting,
as per the international definition of the midwife.
Members who share concerns about this issue are encouraged to contact their
local federal and state members of parliament.
regards
Dr Barbara Vernon
Executive Officer
Australian College of Midwives
