Dear Ca LMs,
The following video is an excerpt from the February 3, 2012 webcast of the Medical Board quarterly meeting. It is short (7 mins total) and addresses three midwifery-related topics. It can be watched as all at once, or shown one by one as specific segments.
Its purpose is two-fold. First, its informative for the many midwives who haven’t been able to regularly attend Medical Board meeting. It introduces you to the main players in our little regulatory drama and helps you to see how appointed Board members (Dr. Bishop against them, Barbara Yaroslasky for them ) and Medical Board staff and executives (Anita Scuri and Curt Worden) think about licensed midwifery issues.
Second, the video provides the politically active among us with an opportunity to share a particular segment that can help to educate State Legislators and their aides (and those who lobby them) about the issues and our need for a legislative fix.
The goal is to make affordable maternity care available to all California families, while reducing the burden on taxpayers for birth-related MediCal expense.
Memorize that sentence, as it is the shortest, best way to say what needs to be said.
In order to further that goal, we need a legislative remedy that will eliminate the ‘structural barrier’ of mandated supervision which prevents midwives from qualifying as Medicaid/MediCal providers and being reimbursed by insurance companies.
Memorize that sentence, as it is the best way to tell people what is blocking this worthy goal and what needs to be done to fix the problem.
Now enjoy the following video and join me in praying that Dr. Bishop will continue to provide such splendid examples of why the supervisory provision of our licensing law doesn’t work.
His oscar-winning performance displays both content (i.e. why a system that requires driving a labor woman to a hospital 60 miles away is a very bad idea for everyone) and the temperament issue — why its insane to legally position the medical profession to exercise critical control the profession of licensed midwifery as providers of physiologically-based care of healthy women.
‘Nuf said!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR8QpOL_VwM[/youtube]