The closure of three maternity units in Perth in a matter of weeks has been linked to workforce shortages and a fall in demand for private hospital admissions.
It has also prompted calls for improved Medicare funding for midwifery-led maternity services.
The latest service to close its doors – the bulk-billing Perth Pregnancy Centre – comes hot on the heels of recent decisions to shut down maternity units at St John of God Hospital Mt Lawley and Glengarry Private Hospital.
The Perth Pregnancy Centre has cancelled all its appointments, as liquidators move to find a new owner for the business.
Maternity health services at Glengarry Hospital in Duncraig were permanently transferred by Ramsay Health Care to Joondalup Private Hospital from this week.
Ramsay said the two services were being consolidated because of a sustained shortage of on-call anaesthetists and paediatricians at Glengarry.
St John of God Health Care announced last month that it would consolidate its Mt Lawley maternity services with St John of God Subiaco, which also took effect from this week.
CEO Bryan Pyne said the closure of maternity services at Mt Lawley would allow the organisation to respond to workforce challenges and better align service capability with community needs.
He said there would be no changes to maternity services at its Murdoch Hospital.
Falling birth rate
“Our community’s needs are changing, and we are seeing private maternity admissions dropping across our hospitals as the birth rate in Western Australia trends downwards,” Mr Pyne said.
“It is also becoming increasingly difficult to sustain the highly skilled maternity workforce across three hospital sites, especially over holiday periods.”
Curtin University midwifery senior lecturer Dr Lesley Kuliukas, from the Faculty of Health Sciences, said the closures showed that the maternity services financial structure was broken and needed overhauling, including more Medicare funding.
“These closures are a great loss for all WA women,” she said.
“All maternity care should be bulk billed — women should not be deterred from seeking pregnancy, birth or postnatal care because of costs.
“When former Health Minister Nicola Roxon decided in 2008 to address women’s requests for a different model of midwifery care, she could not have anticipated that the Medicare rebates offered would not provide a sustainable living for midwives.
“The recent increases to the Medicare rebates are inadequate. Perth Maternity is another bulk-billing midwifery practice, but from 2024 this will likely change as it is proving to be unsustainable for midwives to make a living with the current insufficient Medicare rebates.”
Dr Kuliukas said midwives provided essential care which should be the right of every woman and growing baby. More needed to be done to ensure this care was affordable and widely available and that midwives could make a living from it.