Systems Integration
Systems Integration connects community-based birth settings (homes and birth centers) with the broader medical system (hospitals and EMS). This collaborative approach is vital for advancing health equity and expanding access to midwifery services. (By replacing operational silos with trust and shared guidelines, integration creates a seamless safety net that ensures quality, safety, and smooth care coordination for every community.)
Please view the resources below as guiding tools rather than an exhaustive list, as this work is dynamic and continuously evolving.
Step Up Together
Step Up Together™, a program through Primary Maternity Care, is an interdisciplinary, community-led initiative that drives quality, equity, and integration across the perinatal care continuum spanning home births, birth centers, outpatient settings, hospitals, EMS, and transport systems.
Smooth Transitions
Smooth Transitions® provides a step-by-step framework for hospitals, EMS, and community midwives to build trust, co-create transfer guidelines, and improve care coordination:
Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health (AIM)
“A quality improvement initiative to support best practices that make birth safer, improve maternal health outcomes, and save lives.”
Relationship Building with Hospitals & Complementary Healthcare Providers
Community safety comes from integration, communication, and shared quality systems. When energies are focused on collaboration, this drives innovation.
Oregon Community Birth Transfer Partnership: Transfer Improvement Toolkit
A collaborative quality improvement initiative designed to increase safety and both patient and provider satisfaction in planned home and birth center births to hospital transfers. The hope is that the information and tools provided will contribute to smooth collaboration and transfer between community midwives and hospitals across Oregon and beyond.
Rural Health Systems
Integrating midwives into rural health systems can expand access to perinatal care, improve birth outcomes, strengthen the healthcare workforce, and support sustainable delivery in rural communities.
Hospital Guide to Integrating the Freestanding Birth Center Model
This guide offers hospitals the resources to support effective integration and collaboration with birth centers, in an effort to improve maternal and infant health outcomes nationally.
National Perinatal Task Force
“The National Perinatal Task Force (NPTF) is a community of people who have a heart for women and babies and are concerned about the persistent and worsening maternal child health outcomes in the USA.”
AIM Community Birth Transfer Resource Kit
A collection of best practices to aid in supporting safe and timely transfers from community birth settings to hospitals if the need for a transfer of care arises.