Friday, January 25, 2008

Midwives & Malpractice Insurance

The Citizens for Midwifery blog discusses malpractice insurance for midwives:
When looking through this lens, it becomes clear that lawyers and insurance companies have more to gain from legislation mandating insurance policies for midwives than do birthing women and their families.
The impetus for CfM's post was an article by Judy Slome Cohain in the Winter 2007 issue of Midwifery Today entitled, "Mandatory Malpractice Insurance—Increases CS Rate & Profitability of Litigation, Decreases Planned Homebirths". I don't subscribe to MT, and the article isn't online yet, but the description in the table of contents is intriguing:
This frequent contributor argues convincingly that making malpractice insurance mandatory for midwives will lead to more profitable lawsuits and decrease the number of homebirth midwives to deliver babies, rather than improving birth outcomes or public health.