Access to Maternal Healthcare in the US and the UK
Access to maternal healthcare varies in different geographical settings depending on several issues. They include the number of trained personnel and the available health payment systems. The UK has better access to maternal health compared to the US.
The US has a general shortage of maternity care providers relative to the number of births. Notably, midwives are critical care providers trained to offer a wide range of maternity services. On the other hand, in some cases, the obstetrics-gynecology experts can give a hand in providing the same services. However, generally, midwives-led approaches have a better outcome in comparison to that of obstetrician-gynecologist led approaches. The US, in this note, has a lower supply of midwives and ob-gyns (Tikkanen et al., 2020). They have approximately 12 to 15 care providers in a thousand live births. Contrary to this, the UK has a higher number of midwives.
The UK also have more option of birth settings. In this sense, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, it recommends that birth centres and home births can be an option to give birth for low-risk mothers. These settings have a greater chance of offering normal vaginal births, episiotomies or blood transfusions. On the other hand, according to Jolles et al.(2020), the American Medical Community discourages the utilization of low-risk birth centres. Therefore, home-based deliveries, while on the other hand, hospital-based deliveries, are highly encouraged.
References
Jolles, D., Stapleton, S., Wright, J., Alliman, J., Bauer, K., Townsend, C., & Hoehn‐Velasco, L. (2020). Rural resilience: The role of birth centers in the United States. Birth, 47(4), 430-437.
Tikkanen, R., Gunja, M. Z., FitzGerald, M., & Zephyrin, L. (2020). Maternal mortality and maternity care in the United States compared to 10 other developed countries. Issue briefs, Commonwealth Fund.
