A reprieve has been announced, giving more time to resolve the impasse caused by the intersection of Bill B (which makes indemnity insurance mandatory) and other bills which are designed to reform maternity services in this country.
Australian Health Ministers’ Conference
JOINT COMMUNIQUE
4 September 2009
Australian Health Ministers met in Canberra today to discuss a range of issues affecting the national health system. The meeting was chaired by ACT Minister for Health, Katy Gallagher.
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Homebirth
Health Ministers agreed to a transitional clause in the current draft National Registration and Accreditation Scheme legislation which provides a two year exemption until June 2012 from holding indemnity insurance for privately practising midwives who are unable to obtain professional indemnity insurance for attending a homebirth.
Additional requirements to access the exemption will include;
- A requirement to provide full disclosure and informed consent that they do not have professional indemnity insurance.
- Reporting each homebirth
- Participating in a quality and safety framework which will be developed after consultation led by Victoria through the finalisation of the registration and accreditation process.
These provisions will only apply to midwives working in jurisdictions which do not prohibit such practice as at the date of the implementation of the scheme.
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Other matters referred to in the communique include Health and Hospitals Reform, H1N1 Influenza, Fourth National Mental Health Plan, BreastScreen Australia Evaluation, and Health Workforce Australia.
Comments are welcome on this and other midwifery blogs.
My initial comment centres on the requirements:
A requirement to provide full disclosure and informed consent that they do not have professional indemnity insurance.
This is not a problem. It's not as though we have been pretending that we have had indemnity insurance all these years! I wonder what 'they' think we tell our clients now?
- Reporting each homebirth
Also, not an issue in Victoria, as it seems that the only homebirths that don't get 'reported' to the government's perinatal data collection unit are the intentionally unattended births.
- Participating in a quality and safety framework which will be developed after consultation led by Victoria through the finalisation of the registration and accreditation process.
This is a totally unknown entity. We will have to look at it when it happens. Past experience has included a woeful absence of consultation by government entities with privately practising midwives, so the stated commitment to consultation is something we will be looking out for!
Joy Johnston
This is a welcome reprieve, no doubt brought about by the tremendous public response to the proposed legislation. But, after an initial sigh of relief, it hasn't taken long for my cynicism to rise to the surface... The Minister has her spin in place for Monday and the word 'consultation' rears it's head again...and so it goes..
ReplyDeleteThanks for your ongoing writing Joy.
Having read the transcript of the Health Minister's press conference yesterday (4 Sept), the point that comes out clearly is that Nicola Roxon is placing responsibility for the whole mess around homebirth and private midwifery on the lap of the chief nursing and midwifery officer, for the recommendations of the Maternity Services Review Report.
ReplyDeleteI think midwives’ and women’s groups should now call for the resignation of the writer of the Report. The impact of bad advice to the government at this level has to be seen for what it is, and a person held accountable.
Whether NR was intentionally deferring to the department's direction at the time of the report or not, it was clear from the first reading of the report that the review had been shafted in a major way. A lot of this is documented on the MIPP blog http://midwivesvictoria.blogspot.com/ from about January this year. I recall many other comments at the time. The Discussion paper of the Review set out the possibility of fairness and equity in maternity care, and gave major reference to National Maternity Action Plan (NMAP) as a catalyst for reform. The Report did the opposite as far as the choice of homebirth (for the woman and the midwife) is concerned, effectively placing all midwifery back under medical supervision through bureaucratic oversight and micromanagement by those who haven't got a clue about normal birth.