Friday, January 07, 2011
Do Home Schoolers Deserve a Tax Break?
Monday, November 29, 2010
Healthcare Providers and Social Media
Do you think that the AMA guidelines would be helpful for other types of healthcare providers, such as midwives, doulas, chiropractors, and so on? Although these types of providers often have a much closer, personal relationship with their clients than do medical doctors, it is always a good idea to protect client's privacy (whether or not the provider is a HIPAA-covered entity) and to separate personal and professional online content.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Legal Rights and VBAC
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Midwives in Australia
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Midwifery Legal/Legislative Updates
In Florida, an appeals court confirmed the conviction of Tanya and Linda McGlade for practicing midwifery without a license. The two were charged after the 2004 childbirth death of a family member. Both women have been sentenced to a year in prison, but had been released pending appeal ("Two women lose appeals in midwifery convictions").
North Carolina's effort to pass licensing legislation is reportedly dead ("Midwife Supporters Will Push Again Next Session").
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Pumping at Work
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Pumping at Work
In 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services outlined the bottom-line business benefits of accommodating breast-feeding mothers. They include:
○ Breast-feeding employees miss work less often. Mothers of formula-fed infants take more than twice as many days off to care for sick children. Maternal milk boosts an infant’s immune system and helps protect the baby from common childhood illnesses and infections — a particularly high risk for children in day care. Health insurer Cigna Corp. conducted a two-year study of 343 employees who participated in their lactation support program. Among other things, the program saved $600,000 by reducing absenteeism rates.
○ Breast-feeding lowers health care costs. Cigna’s program resulted in annual savings of $240,000 in health care expenses and 62 percent fewer prescriptions. The reduced health care costs for breast-fed infants translate into lower medical insurance claims for businesses. Mutual of Omaha Insurance Co. had a similar program and found that health care costs for its working mother employees who did not breast-feed were $2,146 higher per person.
○ Workplace lactation support programs can improve employee retention rates. One study of several companies with lactation support programs showed that 94.2 percent of working mothers returned to their employers after maternity leave when lactation support programs were in place. That compares to the national average retention rate of just 59 percent. Another study estimates that companies save $75,000 for each employee who returns to the workplace after childbirth.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Vegetable purees can not be copyrighted
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Legal warning over umbilical cord blood collection
The Human Tissue Authority (HTA) has written to more than 150 organisations following concerns that parents, including new fathers, are collecting the blood themselves using kits delivered to their homes.
Some midwives have said they are being put under pressure to collect the blood illegally and there are fears this could be compromising patient care.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Pregnant and Shackled
New America Media reports on the shackling of pregnant undocumented immigrants in Arizona; and check out Boulder Weekly's Pregnant in Prison.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Lawyer Moms
ETA: You may notice that I've added a list of Delicious Bookmarks. These are not bookmarks that taste good; it's merely interesting article that I've come across that I want to share, but don't necessarily want to blog about.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Pit Police
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Grand Rounds
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Is VBAC illegal? Is homebirth illegal?
You may also be interested in my previous blog post, Is it legal for Florida midwives to do VBACs?
Oh, and if you haven't read it yet, don't miss Time magazine's article The Trouble With Repeat Cesarians in conjunction with ICAN's recently-released report on the organization's hospital survey. I especially liked this quote from the Time article:
But while many obstetricians say fewer patients are requesting VBACs, others counter that the medical profession has been too discouraging of them. Dr. Stuart Fischbein, an ob-gyn whose Camarillo, Calif., hospital won't allow the procedure, is concerned that women are getting "skewed" information about the risks of a VBAC "that leads them down the path that the doctor or hospital wants them to follow, as opposed to medical information that helps them make the best decision." According to a nationwide survey by Childbirth Connection, a 91-year-old maternal-care advocacy group based in New York City, 57% of C-section veterans who gave birth in 2005 were interested in a VBAC but were denied the option of having one.Hm. Why give patients information about a "procedure" that is not offered by you or allowed by your hospital?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Midwifery Care in Canada
The practice of midwifery in Canada is regulated by provincial and territorial authorities. Midwives can only legally practice their profession if they are registered with these authorities, but only seven provinces and territories have regulatory systems in place. This means that midwifery is essentially illegal in the rest of Canada. Further compounding the problem is the fact that even where midwifery is legal, it isn’t always funded or covered by health care. A two-tier system of care has been established, where the standard of maternal care changes depending on your geographic location. Midwives are only available to some women, in some parts of the country, and only some of those women can afford their services.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Traveling mothers still "face hurdles"
Ernst & Young, the New York City financial services company, provides free travel kits so that women on business trips can ship milk home to their babies. And the Boston Consulting Group, a management consulting firm based in Boston, helps women bring their babies on business trips by covering travel expenses for the infant and a baby sitter.
Ms. [Suzanne] Riss [editor-in-chief of Working Mother magazine] called such programs “very cutting edge” and noted that they “go a long way” toward creating loyal employees. “But they’re still the exception, not the rule,” she added.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Top 'Lawyer Mom' Blogs
Check out the other blogs on the list - there are some good ones. And you can find a wealth of information at Darling Hill, which is "the blog that’s devoted to that place where life and flexible lawyering meet. A 100% lawyer-parent friendly legal niche."
Saturday, January 03, 2009
FDA raids Miami birth center; Placentas, medical records confiscated
"They charged in here as if I were making crack cocaine," Daniels complained. "They could have sent one person and we should have shown them everything." She suggested that the raid might have been caused by angry obstetricians, who charge several times what she does to deliver a baby. "The local docs are screaming their heads off.''
I am (obviously) a huge proponent of placenta encapsulation. However, I can not in any way condone this type of activity. I created the Training & Certification program specifically to avoid these types of situations.
As an advocate for the movement toward legitimizing the use of placenta for its natural purpose, this story is absolutely outrageous. People who operate with such a total lack of regard for the gravity of the process and who apparently do not realize that the FDA is not on our side, set the movement back and make it harder for the rest of us who are being safe and working toward legitimacy.
Please, people - don’t think that you can find free instructions for drying placentas on the internet and just set up shop. This is serious. You need to comply with government standards and regulations. Get some training. Work with us. Together we can do it. But not when people like this are operating out there.
White Collar Crime News blogger Jef Henninger has a lawyer's take on the situation:
I hate to see good people get caught up in criminal cases when the entire problem could have been easily avoided if a good attorney got in there and essentially performed an audit on the entire business....I don’t know enough about the facts of this case to really figure out what the situation is here, but I see no indication that anyone was harmed. At the most, it seems like they had sloppy business practices while they performed a service that the people wanted; but the FDA does not agree with. This seems like it would be a good case for a lawyer to argue that this is a technical violation of civil law and not a criminal violation as no one was actually harmed.
Update 1/08/2008: For more information and continuing updates, please visit The Placenta Blog.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Midwife Sued
Obstetrics in America is filled with stories of birth workers who can no longer have loving relationships with their patients because they are scared to death of lawsuits. The only people who suffer from these lawsuits are the mothers and babies because it becomes harder and harder to get the care you want when your caregiver is scared or limited by malpractice insurance.
Thankfully, this case was not about my ability as a midwife or my care of the mother and baby but a question of contracts, insurance, and money. I am so grateful to have learned what I did without anyone being seriously hurt - my heart goes out to midwives who are charged with an unwarrented medical lawsuit.
Saturday, December 06, 2008
ABA Journal Blawg 100
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Poland debates paying for childbirth pain meds
In Western European countries, as well as in Poland's neighboring countries, childbirth anesthetization is considered a standard service provided to women. The question becomes, then, why do Polish women have to pay for it? This situation divides the Polish women into two groups: those who can afford to pay for anesthetization and those who cannot afford to pay for something to which they are entitled.
Well, I guess it's another strike against socialized medicine.