No action on report calling for expansion of N.B. midwifery services, committee hears

The New Brunswick Health Department has been sitting on a report calling for the expansion of the province’s midwifery services since last year.

A review of the province’s pilot midwife project in Fredericton was completed by a third party in 2022, but the department has yet to release it publicly or speak to the New Brunswick Midwifery Council about it.

“We are continuing to wait on the Department of Health’s release of this report publicly and while we continue to wait, midwifery continues to wait. So while we are waiting so are families and so are New Brunswickers who are wanting to have midwifery around the province,” said Kelly Ebbett, the registrar and executive director of the Midwifery Council of New Brunswick.

There are six registered midwives in the province, with four of them actively practising out of the Fredericton clinic. That clinic only takes patients within an hour of Fredericton, taking on 100 people last year, while 250 were turned away. Midwifery services are covered by Medicare and involve both prenatal and postpartum care. From the pilot program’s launch in 2017 to June of 2021 there were a total of 271 midwifery-attended births.

Ebbett says it’s time to meet the larger demand for the service, which she says would particularly help serve rural regions and Indigenous communities.

“Our hope is that there will be an expansion of services across the province and the sooner that can happen, the better,” she said.

“It has been six years in a pilot project mode and it is time that midwifery services are expanded here in Fredericton and across the province.”

The report was obtained by the New Brunswick Green Party through a right to information request and provided to Global News. It calls on the government to expand midwifery services across the province, immediately scale up the existing Fredericton clinic, begin looking at options to create spots for New Brunswickers in midwifery educational programs and overhaul the act governing the profession.

According to the report, satisfaction from those who received midwifery services was 99 per cent positive. It also suggests that the scope of care of midwives could be expanded to work more closely with primary health-care providers.

The council received a copy of the report from Reproductive Justice New Brunswick in late July, not from the Department of Health.

Ebbett urged the legislature’s public accounts committee at a meeting on Wednesday to move forward with expanding access to the profession and modernizing the governing legislation, which was first introduced in 2010.

“I’d like to reiterate the indispensable role that midwives play in maternal and child health. Investing in quality midwifery care is not merely a service to childbearing families, it’s a robust investment in our population’s health and can strengthen our health-care system,” she said.

“As MLAs, you have the capacity to enact meaningful change. I urge you to consider all that was presented here today and take actions that will enhance primary care by implementing midwifery and increasing access across the province.”

Green health critic Megan Mitton said it’s time for the government to heed the recommendations in the report and immediately start scaling up services.

“It’s unacceptable that the government has chosen to not release this report on midwifery for at least a year,” she said.

“Midwifery is one the issues where successive governments have dragged their heels in bringing it to fruition and they’re still dragging their heels.”

On Tuesday the Department of Health outlined the challenges in providing primary care. More than 25,000 people don’t have access to primary health care and more than 60,000 don’t have access to a permanent primary care provider.

Liberal health critic Rob McKee said it makes no sense that the government isn’t acting on a proposal that would help lessen the burden on existing care providers.

“This is one of those areas where we can improve access to primary care by alleviating pressure on family doctors and specialists, on ERs, by moving forward with the full implementation of midwifery in the province,” he said.

“This is one of those areas where we need that collaboration across health-care professionals to move this forward.”

The Department of Health told Global News last week that it was still reviewing the report and deciding on next steps. It did not immediately respond to questions as to why it has taken so long to release or act on the report.